instead of tacking lame affirmations and reminders in my office, i thought i’d (poorly) design my own reminders/mantras that i want to take with me through next year. these differ from resolutions; resolutions have tangible outcomes, they’re somehow measurable. to be very specific, these might be perhaps kindling to my main resolutions, whatever they will be. (haven’t really thought of them yet.)
i guess inherently this whole idea is pathetic, but seems like at the turning point of the year i’ll allow myself some utter cheesiness.
each one is very simple, but i like them because despite their simplicity they’re forgotten on a daily basis. and for me, they’re all essential to what i want to do, who i want to be.
the first: ask more questions.
i haven’t been able to write because work has been eating me alive. however, this week blacklisted will feature a very special guest blogger.
not too many details yet, but i’m excited.
on lonely
i was trying to think of things people do to avoid loneliness. not for any particular reason other than i caught myself running the television on mute because it felt like something was in the room with me, even it was only the glow of the screen. and i wasn’t even lonely (i don’t think i really get lonely actually, can’t remember the last time) but i do unconsciously create substitutes for physical presence, for real conversation, unknowingly. i’ll do things to make the space around me feel full.
so, here’s a list i’m gonna need help with, and will try to keep riffing on. it’s kind of weak right now. also, i don’t do these things, just thought of them as kind of interesting possibilities. they seem creepy, but i mean them innocently:
- putting more time in the laundromat dryer, to stay a bit longer out of your apartment with others silently around, methodically folding and waiting on warm clothes together
- playing with cell phones at a dinner table or bar when someone leaves the table
- drinking or eating
- listening to music loudly in an acoustic space or on headphones
- making mindless banter or chatter with store clerks or bodega workers
- destroying people (strangers around you or those you know) in your mind, plot their demise or their unhappiness
- reading familiar essays or poems aloud
lately, over the past several months, i’ve read a lot of different articles and manifestos regarding speed. some of them are literally about slowing down, some of them are about adapting ourselves to it, some of them are about how we shouldn’t lose ourselves and the physical world around us for the sake of it. i even had a conversation this morning with a secretary here (who is in school to be a specialist/librarian of medieval literature) about her theory on how one reads medieval texts and how the digitization of those texts has removed some of the true experience from the content that can only be evoked by the simple act of holding a book. it’s more about the content, less about getting through it.
most of these people are in praise of speed in the sense of innovation and cultural, societal advancement, but all of their angles into the issue are about holding onto the flesh-and-blood integrity of being lower-gear human beings despite the fact that the world is stuck in fast-forward.
so, in a really lame attempt to curate a little entry on speed, i’ve linked some of the best articles i’ve read on the topic below. read them slowly, don’t skim them. maybe even print them out on paper and read them on your commute or at your desk. just a theme i’ve been encountered with a lot recently and can sort of sense a national mood towards depth and thoughtfulness rather than bursts of shallow and quick.
(and they’re not all literally about speed, but also encapsulate attention, technology, etc)
first, one of my personal heroes, jonathan harris. read the entire series of vignettes:
http://number27.org/worldbuilding.html
from design observer:
http://observatory.designobserver.com/entry.html?entry=10297
from an article on cnn about digital diaries:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/11/03/digital.diary.brain.mind/index.html
from the WSJ (posted on this before) ‘a manifesto for slow communication’:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB2000142405297020355060457435864311740
7778.html#mod=todays_us_weekend_journal
from psfk, about making libraries relevant to communities, creating a ‘new’ model of library:
http://www.psfk.com/2009/11/library-transformed-into-a-24-hour-open-air-community-space.html
an event on governor’s island:
http://www.eatmedaily.com/2009/09/a-different-kind-of-slow-food-at-the-go-slow-cafe-in-pioneers-of-change-on-governors-island/
my mom sent me this today- it’s one of the many flora/fauna photos that my dad obsessively takes of his garden. she sent it with a single line:
‘this is a reminder of things past, that will come again.’
i find this to be a really nice thought. i wonder if for her this is religious sentiment, seasonal nostalgia, or something darker, like the cyclical problems (or, as i know it better, the reoccurring bullshit) of life that confronts us again and again just in different contexts or disguises.
not really sure, and that’s why i like it a lot. because it’s my mom, i’d be prone to guess it’s about the darker side of living, but she is someone that keeps people wondering about her intent. love it.
cool artist i read about on art beast (the daily beast’s art section). called the ‘accidental artist,’ james castle was deaf and never learned to speak, write or read. however, he made sense of the every day world around him through making art using, essentially, scraps. he saw commonplace objects and could creatively, laterally, fashion them into collages, drawings and sculptures of sorts.
kind of kiddish in its look, but what an extreme world he lived in inside his head— colorful and fantastical yet also dark and ominous— a bit morbid in the straightforward way kids are. no proof of this, but i think this guy was a bit of a child in his head from the way his art looks and feels, he had no adult ideology pressed upon him, he wasn’t indoctrinated into the traditional steps of growing-up like the rest of us.
the comments are working again- thanks for letting me know they were busted. so, comment away if you feel like it.
brownfields
i’ve just been introduced to this word. i read it in a magazine earlier tonight and something triggered an obsession with its ideal, its concept.
brownfield (n.) an industrial or commercial site that is idle or underused because of real or perceived environmental pollution.
how interesting. when i read that word and its definition, i felt immediately bonded to it. not because of its literal definition (which is cool and according to the article, there’s a government-funded project to start-up new businesses from brownfields in the US, creating 300 jobs) but because of the way it represents how we live our lives.
most of these US brownfields were left abandoned forever. an industrial plant gone bust, a factory that didn’t make it. the areas are considered poisonous, contaminated. no one wants to go near them because they’re a symbol of failure. but they are indelibly burned into the landscape and haunt those who come upon them. try as they might, cities build away from them, create traffic routes to bypass them—all because these places are ugly and immovable and seemingly permanent.
i thought about that and how we are all marked with these kinds of personal brownfields. we’ve all allowed the landscape of ourselves to be scarred by situations that have happened and don’t believe it can be restored. so instead, we build our lives based on how to avoid these brownfields at all costs, rather than reappraising them and making something cool and new from them.
just a thought. don’t know if it even makes sense.
