L’Agogique

Strangely the “Agogique” Wikipedia article is in French only, here:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agogique

Thus I asked Oxford about “agogic”, I copy/paste:

1 An adjective indicating a variety of accentuation demanded by the nature of a particular musical phrase, rather than by the regular metric pulse of the mus. The first note of a phrase, for instance, may be felt to suggest a slight lingering which confers the effect of an accent: similarly, a leap to note significantly higher or lower than the preceding notes, or a strong discord resolving to a concord, may convey an effect of accentuation (by means of lingering, pressure, etc.) and there are other examples. The complementary term to ‘agogic accent’ (accent of movement) is ‘dynamic accent’ (accent of force), which implies the normal and regular rhythmic accentuation of a piece of music.

2 In a wider sense, ‘agogic’ covers everything connected with ‘expression’, e.g. rallentando, accelerando, rubato, pause, accentuation as described above, etc.

Well of course it’s a tool, a state of mind.

I read about this in a Sol Gabetta (a cello player) interview. If we follow the score, it’s gives a computer mood. One needs groove, or rubato, expression. And it’s linked of course (because we follow the sheet music score, right?) to the idea of “freedom blossoming on constraint”. And it’s linked to the two-to-tango idea of “singing melody seems free but it’s conducted”, enchanted and tamed at the same time.

“The interpreter juggles with spells”. Ces sortilèges sont l’agogique.

Of course we have to dig the “-agogy” word. Pedagogy. Andragogy?

And also, seeing this as a pattern for life, action, methods, rules, creation, art. Follow some rules but add some life, some “expression”, freedom into frames, etc.

Have a nice Christmas!

Action or Language : are we made to take action in the world?..

The English verb “to act” is a MESS for a French. It means :

• To act : to behave (se comporter)
• To act : to take action (agir)
• To act : pretend to be (faire semblant de)
• To act : to operate (faire fonctionner)
• To act : to perform (jouer)

The French question “Sommes-nous fait pour agir ?” means “Are we made to act?”. But it’s not exactly to “take action”, which sounds, I think, “decision, beginning”. Agir, in French is just to act “all along”, to do something.

Then the question could be : “Are we made to do something?”.

Hmmm

Our era is a good environment for this question :

1. On one side : action, gestures, do, make, use the body, use the world, interact, sex, dance, run, make, eat, walk, build. Gestures!
2. On the other side : language, thinking, dialogs, dreams, to read, and all the “do without doing” : to drive, to play a game on a screen, to watch a movie, to geek.

Some like 1.

Some prefers 2.

We dance from one to another. And there’s an invariable, an invariant, a fixed point : the body. It calls, it screams, it collars and nabs. Constantly it pushes us (our mind) and pulls us into the world. A recall, sometimes a caveat : we are incarnated!

So yes, on est fait pour agir, we’re made to “do”, though we can be tempted not to and stay in bed with our mind, thoughts and musics.

Thanks for reading!

Lecture or Aphorism?

Like some children have an imaginary friend, I have an imaginary reader, built like a golem from all of you, my followers : helloooo!

This person is smart and fast, and curious. She (let’s call this person a she) would be able to ask questions like : “From the books you read in the last year, who brought you this feeling of being too much, offering you like a feast of ideas – and what structure do you find there?”.

I thanked her for this question, and answered quickly : Valéry’s notebooks and Bourdieu’s lectures about Manet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Val%C3%A9ry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu

1. Valéry’s notebooks are arranged by themes : humans, poetry, dreams… His paragraphs are very short, a few lines at the most. He’s the best thinker I’ve ever read. The result is, like with Nietzsche sometimes, like a huge tank of crystals, crystals of thoughts. Therefore it’s very slow to read these notebooks : each line almost stops you for a day…
2. Bourdieu was a French sociologist, at the end of his life, he gave a bunch of lectures in the Collège de France about Edouard Manet, the painter. It became a big book, which is exhausting (in the good way) to read : it’s like hearing him constantly exploding with thoughts, ideas, patterns, about art, society, painting, psychology, history, etc.

 

With one you get a piece of complex, smart, fascinating jewelry. With the other you get a river.

Thus, I wanted to write this article with a rotation. You, who wants to share something, what do you do? You blog or you write a book? Do you concentrate or do you flow? To you build a little thinking toy model, or do you offer a one hour firework? How is the quality presented, displayed? A weaving of string arrows which envelops you like a blanket of ideas, or a ring of twelve words, changing you forever?

What is the most effective for an audience? Lecture or Aphorism?

How do you blog? Do you think about your audience, about their time, their mood? Are you too short, too long? What is an article of yours? A box? A current? Jewelry or map?

Thanks for reading!

instagram : _bodylanguage_

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coll%C3%A8ge_de_France

Creativity for Bloggers & others

I took this picture in a French book and I’ll list the creativity tips for you. Apply them on blogging, then on sex, then on photography, OK?

1. Call evidences into questions : have a “why?” conversation and use it on everything.
2. Feed from everything : be curious, and be curious out of your field.
3. Identify your “box” and get out of it : what is your routine?
4. Go see elsewhere : what will you explore ?
5. Steal ideas : and let others steal yours, observation & appropriation.
6. Test your ideas (with whom?) : listen and improve.
7. Jump into the pool, then learn how to swim : dare, have fun, experiment.
8. Learn how to fail : get smarter.
9. Pick yourself up… endlessly; create by mistakes.
10. Highlight the process, more than the goal.
11. Flexible and agile : be fast and elegant and gathering…
12. Stay open, knock down walls : learn, listen to the propositions of life. Who are those who don’t think like you?
13. Walk : inside or outside, even around your desk! Walk and see ideas blossom.
14. Write, always write, even imperfectly, even if you feel you have nothing to say. Everyday.
15. Disconnect and tame boredom.
16. Do much, with little : even if little is “money” or “time”, or “ideas”.
17. Work relentlessly.
18. Love mess, love order too.
19. Don’t judge (too early) : let your work grow, then you’ll see.
20. Let go, and trust : de-control-freak yourself?
21. Surround with the good persons.
22. Keep your brain in movement : talk with younger people!
23. Pace yourself. Nap. Don’t be jealous, it’s a loss of time.
24. It’s never too late

Extend in : can I go too far? Then what?

Try this : prove they’re all wrong.

Then try this : apply to teaching, marketing, military.

What if you don’t have to be creative?

I’d add : listen to propositions, explore your other side, invent your golem

Paul Valéry with Stendhal : Shunning the poetic style & Unreached cruxes

Let’s listen and daydream with Paul Valéry‘s seeds (sorry for my English, it’s pretty hard to translate this sharp spirit)…

ooo

“Mais la vérité et la vie sont désordre; les filiations et les parentés qui ne sont pas surprenantes ne sont pas réelles”.

“But the truth and the life are messy; the filiations and the kinships which are not surprising are not real”.

ooo

List of what Stendhal hated the most in his life :

…pettiness, absence of all whims, terror of opinion, terror of loving what we love, traditions, the little city, the local vanity, inflicted mediocrity…

ooo

“Spéculation sur le lecteur futur” : Speculation on the future reader

…is maybe what bloggers do, hmm? I’m not really read now but one day I will…

Something in the way we write (dry, fast, casual) implying an unknown person who will read it one day…

Paul Valéry about “writing for someone”?

ooo

About Stendhal’s style :

1. Negligences, the willpower of negligence, disdain of all formal qualities of style.
2. Diverse pillagings and quantities of plagiarisms : the essential for the accused is to become infinitely more interesting than his victims – “from other’s bleak possessions, he rebuilds work one can read, because it’s weaved with a certain tone.”

Oohhh that’s baaaad, right?

ooo

• “Fuir le style poetique, et faire sentir qu’on le fuit”
• “To shun the poetic style, and make feel that we shun it”

ooo

“Nous savons bien qu’on ne se dévoile que pour quelque effet”

“We know well that we unveil ourselves only for some effect”

ooo

There are two ways to falsify : to embellish, and the application to sound true.

ooo

“La confidence songe toujours à la gloire, au scandale, à l’excuse, à la propagande”

“A confidence always dreams for glory, scandal, excuse, or propaganda”

ooo

Fears : fictional and wished

ooo

The “worse” is the food of critical temperaments

ooo

Those who want to detect, define and administer the whole social filth

“Toutes les fois que nous accusons et que nous jugeons, le fond n’est pas atteint”

“Each time we accuse and judge, the crux is not reached”

ooo

To live. To appeal. To be loved. To love. To write. Not to be duped. To be myself. To achieve…

ooo

Hmm : pick one, write an article, OK?

Have a nice day!

The Cahiers/Notebooks of Paul Valéry are a unique form of writing. They reveal Valéry as one of the most radical and creative minds of the twentieth century, encompassing a wide range of investigation into all spheres of human activity. His work explores the arts, the sciences, philosophy, history and politics, investigating linguistic, psychological and social issues, all linked to the central questions, relentlessly posed: ‘what is the human mind and how does it work?’, ‘what is the potential of thought and what are its limits?’

Without this, without that

ONE

I talked with a grandma who told me that she invented a little basket near the door of her house : when her grand-daughter, who is 11, visits her, she has to put the phone in the basket.

There are moments in the day, after a meal, a game, a book, when the girl says “And what do we do now?”. Grandma answers : “Nothing”. To let her find the time to daydream and dream, to find the time to… imagine.

TWO

I love Starck, Philippe Starck, a French designer but also a good thinker. He’s good, he’s fast and different. He says that whatever he has to invent, he goes in a little house (I imagine in a forest) where there’s no computer and no Internet, then works for days, like in a trance, with little food and work interspersed with small parts of sleep.

There he works a lot.

THREE

Are you like me, having ideas when you’re in bed, and more ideas in the shower?

The fact that we don’t have much complicated things to do lets our mind wander. Our brain, suddenly happy to be unbusy, unfolds and begins to think.

FOUR

My eldest daughter listens to lectures with iBooked students, but she is the only one who doesn’t take it with her in amphitheaters. Because she knows that we learn and listen differently with a pen.

TOOL

It’s just easy, obvious and non-nonsensical : invent moments in your day when you do not bring this and that : no phone and no computer. Bored? Good to you! Unfold ideas, watch them blossom, then… write an article, OK?

And this extension : What can you take away something to… get something else?

Have a great day!

Paul Valéry : “Our talents press us to employ themselves…

I always come back to Paul Valéry’s notebooks. This guy is the most generous French thinker EVER.

Those who know these work, when they meet, have a special smile. “Ah you love Valéry, OK”.

Sign of good sign…

I just read five pages of this guy, about Stendhal, the writer. Here are some seeds to plant in your own soil :

ONE

• “Se connaître n’est que se prévoir; se prévoir aboutit à jouer un rôle”.
• “To know yourself is only to predict yourself; to predict yourself leads to play a role”.

Really? Isn’t it true? How? Can we forecast ourselves? What do you think about this? Is there a problem? Should we resist? What should we keep?

 

TWO

Napoleo seen by Stendhal is Roman, Italian, it’s the Cesar type, the Condottiere (GIYF). Seen by Balzac, he’s the Emperor of the French, inventor of laws (Le Code Civil (GIYF)), the following of French Revolution, etc.

Valéry takes this as an double exercise : you could prolong these, reasonably, with interest…

Which is a great tool : what subject would you, for your pleasure, DOUBLE STUDY? Lincoln? French lovers? XXth Century music?

 

THREE

• “La volonté d’être encore ce que l’on fut”.
• “The willpower to be again what we have been”.

 

FOUR

• “Nos talents nous pressent de s’employer; la formation vive et incessante des idées engendre une étrange impatience de les produire”.
• “Our talents press us to employ themselves; the keen and unremitting formation of the ideas engenders a strange impatience to produce them”.

 

You have two hours.

Hmmm : jeanpascal@wanadoo.fr.

Thanks for reading!

The need of weakness and other subjects to think of : Chronicle 53

If we see the human mind as a layer of beast and a layer of culture above, what about people who never read? Index cards certainties…

To have the right to judge, one just has to announce that they never judge.

A secret is not made to be kept, but to give some importance to the information.

The suffering of children is the absolute evil.

If one wants to get the upper hand, it’s because one is under.

The stronger of all is the one who shrugs.

A unity made of neutralized contraries, an apparent immobility which hides a vertiginous and perpetual life : develop.

What is our “horrible need of weakness”?

The coward’s tantrum.

What is temptation, what is desire? How are they different?

Categories, what do they say?

If a soft bass voice is the sign of high civilization, what about loud people?

Is to transform a place into something it’s not (take an old church and make it a gallery, take a barn and make it a store) vulgar or painful? Why?

Someone is ugly because one was born ugly, someone is ugly because mediocrity shaped their face. Do we have the faculty to determine it? Which one scares you the most?

I read that one of one father’s role (purpose) is to save time to his child, to offer or show them the most checked boxes possible before sailing on existence. I terribly agree with this one.

Those for whom one of the greatest pleasures is to cancel a travel.

This age where you have a form, an index card for everything and everyone. Your neighbor, a singer, a recipe, a writer, a movie, a city. This exercise : to cancel it, to change it, to enrich it. How?

To make/keep someone shut up, three ways : to monolog endlessly, to make as if you don’t understand, to show that you’re not interested by what one says.

Our mother dreams about what?

Good masters open a chasm under your feet. In one sentence, they show it to you. For good or bad.

You know things only by differences, wrote Suares. Does it mean that we function with analogies?

If there are no rules, you can not transgress them.

The right to go away (Baudelaire). Develop.

To be conscious of everything and at the same time to keep our instinct alive : Art?

Mystery, but no obscurity.

A lack can be unconscious. It shows itself with instant tears…

Thanks! Have a good day!

All these stolen from J. D. – let’s spread.

Proust & Valéry : Tropisms Unfolding

Proust is really different. This writer in France is really a milestone : long, hard to read, but magnificent like a cathedral for those who dared to explore his huge masterpiece.

Therefore there are two kinds of French people : those who read Proust and those who did not, or abandoned the discipline.

Today I talked with a Proust lover, and we agreed on this :

Proust was a blogger

Well : the way he explores the human mind and its tropisms (which are the “very subtle movements of the human mind”), like a… craftsman goldsmith, a jewels maker, is exhausting : on each page you’ll find ideas for one single evening of conversation (with a real conversation lover, I mean).

(I know : there are few)

Then we talked about Paul Valéry, who does the same in his Carnets (Notebooks), but not in the “novel” form : only thinking and explaining.

Both of them are craftsmen, goldsmiths, jewels makers. They find ideas so subtle and delicious that you have to stop and smile and think for a few hours. Intelligences of the highest range…

One (Proust) unfolds this in long (I mean : LONG) phrases running for pages in gorgeous French. It’s like spreading out in the novel, it’s so good that it can hurt you. YES : “that” good.

The other one (Valéry) works on jewels. He makes very very small paragraphs, a few lines, that makes you stop and think the whole thing :

Oh my God he’s so right I’ve never seen it written so well before!

Finding seeds, delicate ideas. Offering them to the audience, one in complex magnificent buildings made of words, the other in small boxes containing a splendid marvel.

Two ways, to means. Try both, if you dare!

Thanks for reading!

Bothness, the Blindfolded Lynx Game – Repost

https://wp.me/p6yTGH-7EM

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

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

Well, what the heck is this double opposition?

I don’t know.

Many movies are based on Evil vs Good, right?

Let’s make a geometric transposition : Evil towards Chaos, and Good towards Order. Okey?

In a crime novel, the murder brings chaos in the apparatus which is the good society of men. The detective brings back order, thanks mister.

It seems simple, but I thus and therefore automatically choose the contrary.

Order can be Evil. 1984 the book. Or Nazis perfect aligned armies. More : in the new Star Wars, the bad guys are named the First Order…

1. I take pliers, I pinch “Order” and I pin in on a tree. Order is straight lines, obedience, conservative, religion, highways, mainstream, social pressure, black and white, perfectly mown lawns, rules.
2. I take my two fingers and I grab “Chaos”, where I find colors, invention, freedom, progress in Art, little mountain paths, movements, punk happy gardens.

 

Well, let’s go on. Imagine a cross-diagram : left-right for evil good, and up-down for order-chaos.

Combine :

1. Evil Chaos : Hell, The Battle of Stalingrad. Revolutions.
2. Evil Order : 1984 Society, Fascism.
3. Good Chaos : Picasso, Stravinsky : creativity, progress. Revolutions.
4. Good Order : “The idea of Norway” – justice, rightful, legitimate.

 

What else? What do you think? Where does that go?

Everything immoderate is negative… right? Is it only a question of balance?
Paul Valéry, who is a wise man, says that in a society ruled by order, things happen :

• What is sensitive in men can not always be precise (not everything can be measured and put in “order”).
• Order is a burden to people. They have to dream, and invent. Under quietness of order, some brains shake themselves, hopes bloom…

 

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

Dispositif : a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions–in short, the said as much as the unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be established between these elements.

“Further expanding the already large class of Foucauldian apparatuses, I shall call an apparatus literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gestures, behaviors, opinions, or discourses of living beings. Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, confession, factories, disciplines, judicial measures, and so forth (whose connection with power is in a certain sense evident), but also the pen, writing, literature, philosophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, computers, cellular telephones and—why not—language itself, which is perhaps the most ancient of apparatuses—one in which thousands and thousands of years ago a primate inadvertently let himself be captured, probably without realizing the consequences that he was about to face.” (Agamben)

 

 

Oh I don’t care what comes tomorrow
We can face it together
The way…

 

 

Picasso’s Tools for bloggers!?

Picasso’s Tools for bloggers!?

Nah, not his cans and brushes : Tools for the mind!

Here’s what I did : I picked a great book about Picasso, from Philippe Dagen.

It’s a great book because it’s not about “Picasso’s life”, and it’s not a “catalog of paintings”. He looked for structures, patterns, tools for the mind, and showed how in many aspects Pablo Picasso is a great artist.

I took a pictures of these patterns he detected, and I’ll casually apply them into the blogging activity. You’re free, after this, to apply this toolbox to poetry, teaching, marketing, photography, baking, theater or music composition. Life’s cool, right?

1. Discover the modern
2. Express by the primitive
3. Build until crumbling
4. Invent some new codes
5. Hold all styles in one’s hand
6. Let loom the monsters
7. Stare at inhumanity
8. Pit against the present
9. Never finish

 

These are terribly pleasant injunctions, right? It shows we can build our own roads, windows, tools and door. It shows we can dare, be casual, open, multiple. It shows we can play, have fun, plug things, juxtapose concepts, dance, be fast, and intelligent, and plugged to the now.

Have fun!

 

 

“What do we displace, today, dear?”

There’s a French/English problem with the word “Translation” :

In English, you use the same word to translate a word (in a language to another language) AND to translate in geometry (which “moves every point of a figure or a space by the same distance in a given direction”).

In French, “to translate a word” is Traduire, and “to translate geometrically” is Translater. Which becomes for nouns : Une Traduction / Une Translation.

 

I had fun one day writing an article about concepts translations, which is, for example, to pick an architecture concept (“the door”, “the archway”) and to use it in another discipline (in poetry, in photography, or teaching).

“Displacing Concepts” : from Architecture to Poetry ?

 

I admit my brain is in some places connected like that : as soon as I notice a structure, I want to extract it and play with it around, in… another discipline.

• The idea of verse in poetry would become interesting in photography.
• The form “sonata” in music is maybe something in architecture.
• Etc.

 

Today I take my magnifier and I realize we could do this “exercise” with other things than concepts.

1. Methods
2. Models
3. Invention
4. Team
5. Supervision
6. Training exercises types
7. Risks
8. Out of the box thinking
9. Paradigm changes
10. Etc

 

I know someone who studied how music pedagogy could be useful to language learning. That’s a fantastic idea!

Now this is a subject for an afternoon conversation, right?

If you don’t have a partner for that, read some prefaces or thinkers’ interviews, find the seeds and patterns, and apply them elsewhere.

What is impressionism (art) in teaching? What is a corridor (architecture) in marketing campaign? What is a fade to black (movie editing) in poetry? What can a street photographer bring to a lecturer? Etc.

Have fun. Thanks for reading!

Geometrical Hashtag Ideas

When you write a blog on WordPress, you check your activity from time to time. The website gives you statistics on what articles are read, and from which country.

When you see what is read, you smile : you’re happy to discover that your article is like alive somewhere, possibly putting a little spark in a brain.

Of course we bloggers don’t control anything. Some articles are a hit for no understandable reasons. For example, my ““Become who you are”, is it what Pindar said?” has been read 176 times since I wrote it and I really don’t understand why…

We all know that some ideas come from a combination. Remember? : One book, you’re a student, three books opened and you’re a searcher.

Some mornings I read my stats and I discover that five-six articles has been read within the few last hours. My brain can’t help doing the Geometrical Shape Game :

• trying to find the link between all of them
• trying to invent a new article subject from the combination, or even :
• trying to find a coded message sent by… The Universe.

Most of the time, it makes sense!

(of course, I invent this sense)

And well, it gave me… this article!

Thanks for reading!

 

Do your shopping/Take your pick

There’s always one moment in a month when you want to metablog.

 

Yesterday I discovered somebody read about sixty pages of this blog, and I wondered :

What did they find?

…painters & photographers, haikus, quotes, small ideas : Unexpected Connections & Sparks Exchanges – I even made a List of Sorts of Blog Articles…

It seems “constantly random”, but my followers know there’s a structure under. Therefore I metablogged about it :

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

 

My sweet will is to share, to invite you to pick tools and ideas, then share again. These are not my ideas, but good ones I found which are worth spreading. Well… I think so!

 

Dreamread, take your pick. Find an ideatool and use it another way. You’re invited to do your shopping here. Explore more. Use my blog as a table of content. Stealfind what I wanted to say. Bendfind what I didn’t say (and tell it back to me, thank youuuu).

What I like the most, probably, is :

When an idea you find in a blog, in a book, in a conversation, recombines with other ideas you have in mind at the moment.

 

Recombining. That’s the subject of another article, right?

 

 

Thanks for reading!

 

How to find ideas to blog about?

I often meet/read this question in blogs : “How do I find ideas?”

Most of the time the main answer is “everywhere”. Haha. Great.

My first thought is always :  “If you need to “find ideas to blog about”, you shouldn’t blog”. Racing cars are better. You can also shoot flying plates, lift some weight, or train some fleas.

But it doesn’t work like that, I knowwww…

I suppose this happens when one blogs for a reason – to make money, to meet people, to be famous, whatever :

1. Why do you blog?
2. How do you blog?

If you blog because of this pattern which is “something HAS TO go out” – the urge of expression, you won’t ever ask yourself how to find ideas, right?

They literally flow out of you, they squirtspatter in your WordPress’s drafts. That’s cute, in a way!

The Importance of rumunchewminating drafts

 

OK I go on : How to find ideas to blog about? Google helps with plenty of good ideas.

My way is to use a reading grid, a reading framework you will use on EVERYTHING you meet, a book, a title, a person, a star, a story : everything. You can use a few, if you like.

For example you can watch the world :

• Historically (“I travelled in this Norway city, which…”)
• Reversely (“10 ways to become fat”)
• Engineerely (“this insect is a machine”)
• Negatively (“sports are for idiots”)
• Paranoia-Matrixely (all I see is crafted to lure me)
• Religiously (a god takes care of me)
• Newagely (the universe sent all this to make me grow)
• Scenaristically (everything could be put in a story)
• Nostalgically (link all things to your past)
• Toolboxerly (well, this is what I do)

 

My toolbox is made of this : I try to find a framework, a structure, a grid, a pattern, in everything I see. If the structure is already here, I LOVE to share it. As, maybe, a suggestion to do the same, to think.

For example, to notice that Edouard Manet (the painter) and Jeff Wall (the photographer) have a common way to question the public, to notice that Mad Max and operas have many things in common, to find how great artists (Miles Davis, Pablo Picasso or William Faulkner) 1/ push themselves in unknown territories 2/ play with avant-garde 3/ break complex skills because it became to easy for them 4/ find another breath near the end of their lives… Etc.

 

Well, sorry, that’s all ! Find your grid, frame everything you meet and see under this grid, and ideas will squirtspatter. Apply, watch, that’s it : yeepee!

Thanks for reading! (sorry to destroy English like that)

 

 

One person can’t be everything to another : Chronicle 50

This 50th Chronicle is about subjects I should write about :

 

Creation as association of ideas? You have two hours.

______

I should try an article to sort pop & rock megahits by category. The one with a riff (Satisfaction), the unexpected chorus, the hymn (Shout), the waltz (Golden Brown), the voice, the explosive gimmick, etc…

______

“One person can’t be everything to another”, therefore what.

______

There’s an article to write about Disney Smile. There’s an Urban Dictionary entry : “Disney Smile : a obviously fake and often exaggerated smile”. Since Ariel maybe, and Aladdin, they seem to become aware of this.

______

The Psychocriminology syndrome, the My Kid Don’t Sleep syndrome, the Present for my Retiring Dad syndrome, the I have Twins it’s a problem syndrome : every bookseller knows them. People constantly ask for these books, and you can’t have any which satisfy them. Thus, if you have zero book or seventeen books about these subjects, you will never sell a single one. You show them the books, and they grin : “Well, no”. So what? So I dun’t knuw.

______

“An artist has to be challenged” – OK but why and when and how? A competitor? Someone who finally tell him he’s not that good?

______

If I was thirty years younger I’d vlog on YouTube, asking the stars this single question :

What music do YOU listen to?

There’s a series of mix-albums called Back_to_Mine. I love this idea, which is to ask what the artist would play at home after a night out. Röyksopp came with delightful nuggets like Vangelis, Popol Vuh or This Mortal Coil. It’s like a map. If you like this artist, you are interested in knowing its foundations… Oui?

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Nietzsche. Cioran. These are two names I have in mind when I think about archipelago thinking, “la pensée en archipel”. Build a list of these books.

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Write this book :

How don’t you give someone you love… conversation? Where is deep intimacy, spiritual connection? The one who loves you should see you as his companion. His confident. His love.

If you never get more than a spoon of it : What kind of love is this, then? Find many positive answers.

 

Thanks for reading!

Edward Weston

 

 

Ideas in sieve & Enjoying dissatisfaction : Chronicle 49

Some are ideas borrowed from C. Dantzig. Let them circulate.

Some people have the nerve to sit at your desk. They shouldn’t. It’s hurtful, right?

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Some travellers do everything not to discover.

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Wimps’ goal is to kill others’ happiness.

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“Americans are conscientious, Italians are spontaneous, French are abstract, Irish are friendly, Canadians are quiet”… Really??

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“Malheureux peut-être l’homme, mais heureux l’artiste que le désir déchire !”, writes Baudelaire. How to translate this?

“Sad, maybe the man, but happy the artist torn by desire”

Thus a dissatisfied enjoys his dissatisfaction.

Because…

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“Greed is a panic. Sport is a panic. Frivolity is a panic. Snobbery is a panic. Careerism is a panic. Panic disguises itself under the name of passion”.

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One has tact because they are kind-hearted.

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Malevolent meticulousness

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Boring distractions. Odd-jobs.

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Verbs with “tear”

1. To tear (move down fast) : dévaler
2. To tear (become torn) : se déchirer
3. To tear (from, or to distress) : déchirer
4. To tear (pull up, wrench) : arracher
5. To tear along (move quickly) : filer
6. To tear apart (or to pieces, to shreds, or up) : déchiqueter, dépecer, mettre en lambeaux
7. To tear apart (or down) (give negative opinions) : démolir, démonter, casser, éreinter, descendre en flammes
8. To tear away (or off) : s’arracher, se tailler, se barrer
9. To tear into (scold) : s’en prendre à quelqu’un
10. To tear into (open package/rip apart) : ouvrir un paquet violemment
11. To tear open : déchirer un emballage
12. To tear out (remove by ripping) : déchirer (une page par exemple)
13. To tear through : avaler, dévorer un livre, finir un travail
14. Tear up the rulebook : désobéir aux règles
15. Tear you hair out : s’arracher les cheveux
16. Wear and tear, ohhhh

This is one reason (with idioms, pronunciation) why English is hard.

Have a nice day! Bon dimanche !

God is coming and is she pissed!

Bookstopoo & Hapitoubimi : Chronicle 48

We’re at the beginning of a heatwave in France today. Sort of. Well, all my windows opened… as France fights Argentina for the football World Cup. I don’t need to watch it, because I can hear all the city screaming each time France scores a goal. 4-2 we won!

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How to tell about something which happened only one time, yet comes within the scope of a series?

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“How to catch what moves, generates, leaks, becomes, invents, slips, spurges… instead of  contemplating what we think is fixe, immuable, eternal, stable, immobile?”

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Bookstopoo should be the title of a book I’ll write one day : a LIST of good books you should have in your toilets (why in the world do you call this “restroom”??).

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Obedient to rules, no one can invent.

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You remember the past. The good things or the bad things?

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It’s called Hapitoubimi. What kind of animal is this?

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I learned about this idiom, “dodge a bullet“, it’s great!

Urban Dictionary says “If someone has dodged a bullet, they have successfully avoided a very serious problem.”, that makes sense, thought I wonder, as an ESL, what is the color of it : is it by cowardice or because you’re smart? Is it effectiveness and skillfulness, or is it, when you dodge a bullet, because you’re a lazy coward? When do you use it?

Well, I ask this because I understood also that “dodge” is something which is simply “not right”, and I found many sarcastic things about Dodge City. I also remember in Deliverance (the movie) the talking about “an old Dodge” – sounded “old wreck”.

Other words I discovered with pleasure :

1. Honeycomb
2. Tit for tat
3. Betwixt

 

Have a nice day!

 

 

 

Where to apply modernity?

Reading my Jeff Wall book I found this little paragraph about certain movie directors who were modern (and even avant-gardist) BUT in a tradictionnal form.

Fellini, Bergman, Rohmer, Bunuel, Eustache or Fassbinder, making movies with this idea :

Putting modernity pressure not on the form itself, but elsewhere, on elements of the classic form.

Each example is very clear, when opposed to Jean-Luc Godard, who killed, enstranged, deformed, distorded, dented the classical forms of movies : experiences on the sound, narration, superposition, edition.

“Rule Breaking Films” (you can YouTube this) are interesting ALSO to find out (and list and sort) where modernity has been applied.

Kaleidocopic (Persona), surreal/casual (8 1/2), jazzyist jumcuts (A bout de Souffle), no sets (Dogville), refusing artificial dramas (Patterson), watching the camera (Pierrot le Fou, Monica, Do the right Thing) : you’ll find your own examples with Google.

 

Anyway, what’s interesting me here is this tool :

Apply modernity, break some rules, push avant-garde elements. OK, but what if on some places only, letting the rest totatlly “normal”?

Where? Poetry? Photography? What’s your field? How will you choose your “element”?

 

Thanks for reading!

JP