A word from Montaigne

Bumped into a quote from Montaigne: “The awful thing about life is this: Everyone has his reasons.” It's also funny how, the longer you know someone, the more you understand their justifications and the more acceptable what they do becomes. That's why my golden rule remains: "Mind the company you keep, sooner or later you will behave like them." But Montaigne says it sooo much better.

The AA

The AA have a maxim "Anything you place before your sobriety, you're going to lose." For some reason that shook me, largely because I'm not a drunk, but it struck me how few of the people I see around me are sober. I would have used 'clarity' instead of 'sobriety,' but when you stop and think how much people throw away because they're in some fuzzy state... Whatever you throw your clarity away for - ends up costing you both itself and the clarity you lost trying to get it.

Trawling for gems, memory and Nationalism

It came to me that I spend every day of my life reading copiously because I am looking for little nuggets that move me in one direction or another - either to feel or to think outside the box. I've decided to record them here so that others can be spared the work.

Today was a good day - there were two. Both came from American Scholar magazine which I cannot recommend enough.

1) There are six "types of memory: procedural (how to sweep the floor); semantic (facts , words, the word broom and what it refers to); working (being used at this moment to consider the concept of a broom); episodic (personal memories, the time you swept up your diamond with the dirt); declarative (remembering facts and events that become available for later conscious reflection)." Priscilla Long

I think this may have some vital clues in it into how to approach software design from a different angle and perhaps other designs as well. No matter how we map it, we don't have this many types of memory in computation today and we need to consider how to expand our approach as a result of this information. Also, no matter what we try to achieve in art, it must jog memory to create an effect in others (other than astonishment.) So perhaps it is time for us as artists, advertisers, communicators etc. to ask what memory center(s) we are aiming for before we shoot.

2) John Lukacs remarks that "nationalism is the illegitimate marriage of patriotism with a habitual inferiority complex." That's just a cunning definition in a beautifully crafted sentence.

The use of 'illegitimate' is exquisite.

Forces of Nature

1.
Forces of nature prevail.
Between the living and the dead,
We float like azure helium balloons
Invisible prey in the sky
Slaves to every whim that we do not perceive
Inevitably to burst at their bidding.
Nonetheless I have found a way through.

2.
Joy in ice and cold.
Smartly remove the element of luck for 80 quid,
Snow lays a blanket over grime.
Bose lays a blanket over noise.
Loss and separation cascade over every smile
But there is no more fear.
Fear is a consequence of hope,
What is there to hope for when all is lost?

3.
And for each thing lost another is found
Manyana and Santa Damiana
They make Zivania in my mother’s land
It all has meaning, though none of it connects
And it had to happen all at once because…
All things happen in one myopic instant.
How ironic to wash up on these shores yet again.

4.
There is the sunset that some must know
Do I regret its silent or screaming fall?
Alone in the sky in similar pain
None will know how we felt in the empty forest of that moment.
I certainly do not.
Except to know that you too were a force of nature.
There was the sea, the arctic wind, the birds.
The sun and you.
I half expected you to take wing
And you did. Thefts of ecstasy.

5.
The sweetest notes bring out the silence
Which silence is critique and indicts
Like all traitors I must hide
From the pen and from the past
For shame I have forgotten the lines
My finest poems lie buried in this machine
My soul transfigured into Kafka’s machine.

6.
Judas of the Labyronth, I have betrayed the simple
Economics of existence
Money comes and goes, but time only goes
What fool sells the irretrievable for what will surely be lost one day?

7.
Labyronth I’ve been helled too long
Rhyming couplets, Platonic ideals, golden doors
There is a dark and lonely tunnel
For a dark and Minotaury soul
Nonetheless I have found a way through.

8.
Dirty washing and rotten food
Decay blankets the flavour of the water
Smoke blankets the notes of the piano
Nonetheless I have found…
If a man cries alone in the forest
Does he make a sound?
My head emerges from the tunnel.
In the end it must all come out.