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Unformatted Sketch of a scene from a feature we'd like to see.

INT. OPULENT ROOM WITH TWO DOORS AND NO WINDOWS - DAY.

There is a UNWASHED HUMAN reclining in trash piled up against a richly decorated wall. The room is the child of the Paris Opera and the Palace of Versailles. There are two doors. One on either side of the room. Before long, one door opens and a COIFFED HUMAN enters slowly with downcast eyes as if ashamed to look.
UH: Come on then.
CH: Can we talk about this?
UH: You won't listen, what's to say?
The Unwashed Human arranges the trash piled around itself in a meticulous manner as if arranging flower petals into a mandala. The Coiffed Human is utterly ignored.
CH: See you.
The Unwashed Human has a cut lip and there are open sores on its bare feet.
UH: You won't. Can't leave the way you came in.
CH: I will.
UH: Someone will. Won't be you.
CH: I don't want to end up like you.
UH: You won't. I stayed. You're going.
CH: You know what I meant.
Coiffed Human moves quickly for the other door but makes an about turn when nearly there and almost runs back through the door they came in.

Four dimensions of people according to one researcher

Is there someone outside this framework? I don't know.

I was listening to the audiobook version of Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl and he mentions there are only two races: those who are sadists and those who are not (my wording).

Immediately I thought of this chart by Professor Carlo Cipolla.

If there is someone outside this framework, it's not me.

Take a photo, curate a photo.

Take photos. But pick a handful, any number, to represent your day. Those receipts? You don't need them anymore. Went to the park and took dozens? Pick five. If a life is made up of days, and you leave the editing and curating for tomorrow, which never comes, why are you taking photos at all?

One friend of mine takes no photos. He wants memories and the act of taking photos in his mind is a distraction.

Another friend takes few photos. Most all of which are good. Myself? Too many and I procrastinate curating.

Let's all take fewer photos and curate the photos taken. Or we will end up yet again with too many photos to appreciate them.

Where I'm going to from (where I've been)

A friend from Toronto is in town and he reminded me that where we come from has a big impact on our perceptions. For some, coming to Europe is an advance towards their future, a victory. For others it is a retreat towards their past. In addition to an advance or a retreat, it can be a moving from a place or a moving towards a place.

Captain Obvious? It seems important to lay these presuppositions down.

The frames through which we perceive our reality are in some sense the only reality we know. Lost in a musum of painting we cannot really see but we imagine what must be there by the nature and texture of their frames.

Choices and consequences as a famous Canadian actor reminds us in his latest film.

Both are daily presences. Especially around now and especially around here.

Force overwhelmed by superior force: another boring plot

Here are a few claims to substantiate at leisure. Characters in conflict generate plots which are compelling. Whenever the plot relies on force overwhelmed by a superior force there is a failure of characterisation.

In marketing there is an alternative to force. It is not the strongest who wins but the first. The first to generate a new category in the mind of the audience is automatically at the top of a ladder with one rung.

I have intuitively connected these three claims: characters in conflict generate compelling plots, plots relying on force overwhelmed by superior force have an inherent flaw, to the first and not to the strongest go the spoils. The one in the middle is my claim, the other two come from authorities.

It remains to be seen if the evidence will support my reasons for connecting these claims.

It is far more satisfying when a plot can be looked at in retrospect as the inevitable outcome of a conflict between characters in whom we have vested our interest. Much like a convenience store sandwhich: modest expectations remorselessly fulfilled.

p.s. When you force things, you break things. Since you can only put things together or break them apart, take care to break apart only what you can survive not being able to put back together.

Medium is not the message, it is the challenge, says my Dad

Between 1967 and 1970 my father wrote articles for the local (at 17 years old) and national newspapers (at 18-20) as well as youth magazines. For example, he did the movie pages for HEY a youth magazine since defunct although the name remains popular.

So, he had to get a typewriter because the papers would not accept hand written articles. Up until then he had used pencils and pens out of necessity but there were advantages. Writing his first drafts in pencil, he could make corrections fairly easily and then write a fair copy in pen. The process was laborious but forgiving. It took actual physical effort and mental concentration to write legibly and correctly but when mistakes happened or he changed his mind he could revise without much hassle.

But the typewriter changed all that. Because the papers would not take hand written articles, he purchased a Grey Astor typewriter from Austria. He still has it. It is a slender and comparatively lightweight portable typewriter very similar to an Olivetti Lettera 22. He got it on an eight month installment and started typing up articles immediately to help pay for it.

Between writing movie reviews and other pieces, he participated in student riots and made protest posters, For every article he used carbon copy sheets between his pages because he wanted a copy for himself.

Which is where he learned how unforgiving a typewriter can be. He soon discovered that he hated blemished copies and because he could not make changes the way he used to with pencil and pen he began to compose even more in his head. He simply didn't want to make (what he saw as) a mistake.

He switched to computers as soon as he could and at first he continued to compose in his head and not on the screen. But the computer was so generous with mistakes!

He recently told me that 'once you start writing on a computer, even if you try to continue to compose in your head you end up with verbal diarrhea.'

In other words, even if you try to maintain the discipline of mental composition on a computer, invariably you end up in a fluid environment of cuts and pastes. Far better then to start with pencil and pen or with a typewriter if you are brave enough. Because these tools still demand physical effort and mental concentration that a computer will never require.

I confess some of my recent text messages were dictated to my phone. Speech to text has come a long way. Soon (if not now) speech to text will be faster than a court reporters' shorthand.

To maintain the architectures of mind that are the mental analogues to the mechanical skills of writing and typing, I must continue to exercise certain behaviours. I must continue to draft with pencil, pen, & typewriter.

Cursive is no longer taught in some schools, with the loss of yet another mechanical skill, I fear a mental ability is also being lost and there is nothing on the horizon I see as an adequate replacement.

All of which is to say that my father's riff on Marshall McLuhan's favorite adage is an apt one: Every medium presents its own challenges and each of those challenges is an opportunity in disguise. There are rewards you have not yet tasted lying in wait for you at the end of the pen or around the next carriage return.

Go on. Find out. Turn off.

Rant 32: Tsundoku & Bibliomania

Do not worship dead objects. Buy books to read them not because they're available.

Bibliomania can ruin your life. Be sure to read every book you buy and if you don't read it then get rid of it.

You must beat your tsundoku or you will be eaten by it. Having an antilibrary does have it's warm reassurance and it is true that books do go out of print and become difficult to obtain. Nevertheless, this is an age of the pan-dimensional Amazon's Bay.

Most of your library can be reduced to a photo archive of the covers, as one friend does during his regular cullings. He is not a researcher however.

Peppa Pig defines a talent as something you're good at doing which you also like to do. But can a talent for research emerge without books to read and peruse and refer to?

Books are the tools of my trade. For me to have read every book in my library would be as bad as having read none of them. If I had the resources I would build a room of modest area but with 8 meter high walls. One wall would be a bookshelf (and a built-in ladder). The other three would be a blackboard, a whiteboard, and a blank white plaster wall. The door would be through the bookshelf. The ceiling would be lightly tinted glass.

But until that room, until that day. The books must be contained. Be discriminating.

Idea 99: 8th Coven, 2nd Broom, Company B

Every square unit of area we take from the enemy is hard fought and dearly paid for in life. We find ourselves in dire straits. We keep going. -- from the Journal of Pvt. Blair during the assault on Cyclopea Three during the Witch Wars of 3431.

"Get back up there!"
"You're not the boss of me!
"Oh yes I am,"
"Argh! Yes you are!"
"She's gonna want to see progress!"
The cackle of the witch sergeant was full throated and high pitched at the same time. It struck a nerve deep in the ancestral coccyx and made you twitch and spasm in fearful sparks of pain.

I have just spent five hours throwing away stuff

Time I could have spent improving my skills, reading a book, shopping for groceries was spent throwing out stuff I should have thrown out years ago. Like every schmo I know with stuff, I don't notice the years it takes to accumulate it but I do notice the hours it takes to dissipate it.

I heard a good story from a relative about their neighbour. This neighbour was a cool dude with style and taste. He would sit in the evenings on his porch and play rare jazz records. Friends would drop by to share a bite to eat or with something to drink. He was a cordial and warm host.

When he died, his relative with power of attorney put his house on the market. There was a one day open house garage sale. Everything in the place for a buck or a quarter. Like locusts, strangers picked over his rare and precious curiosities. lifetimes of wonder and mystery collected in each object.

What didn't sell that day was bagged up and put to the curb. There was too much bagged and curbed.

I don't want my stuff to meet that fate. I'd rather hand my treasures down to individuals I know well who can choose to enjoy them for some time or pass them on or sell them or let them go or whatever they deem fit.

But the chain of custody will not be broken.

My relative bought his rocking chair. She wanted one thing to remember him by.

First you get the stuff, then the stuff gets some stuff, then the stuff gets you.

First drafts with a fountain pen in a physical notebook vs Stephen King's pencil

An interviewer asked Stephen King what sort of pencil he uses, says Seth Godin in an interview by Tim Ferris. Godin goes on to say the type of pencil is irrelevant just like the process of any one individual is irrelevant. For what it is worth, Stephen King gets up in the morning and gets 6 clean pages written in a computer and then gets on with his day and his life. Seth Godin, by contrast, admits to no ritual or habit. He just posts once a day.

By contrast, Neil Gaiman says he writes his first drafts with a fountain pen in a good notebook (coincidentally also in an interview by Tim Ferris). Gaiman goes on to support his claim by saying he feels like he is losing something when he makes cuts to a digital first draft, but when he types up his first draft into the computer and decides to leave something out he feels like nothing is lost and what is more, he saves time.

So which process doesn't matter, what does matter is that you find a process that works for you.

Once, when I was a teenager, I saw a guy sitting and writing in a cafe on a legal pad with a disposable pen. He had a girl leaning up against him and I remember she was cute. He paid her no attention. At that age I thought it odd amusing. They seemed to have an arrangement. She never spoke. She just leaned on his left arm with her head sometimes resting on his shoulder while he wrote.

I interrupted him to ask why he did it that way, he replied he just had to. At that stage of my life I was already a touch typist with the familiar-to-young-writers fulminous outpouring of material.

I could not imagine taking such pains. There was too much to be done.

At this later stage of my life, I have another process: I use whatever I have, wherever I am.

But the best drafts still come from physical media. Pens and pencils. As an instructor of academic writing, I advise my students to do the same. Invariably, when they take my advice, they produce higher quality.

So the answer to the question implied in the title is yes, no, either, both.

Just write.

Detail from the Castle of Cagliostro (1979) Directed by Hayao Miyazaki

When does the audience matter?

“What is most important is from which state of mind you're doing what you're doing," Marina Abramovic, a performance artist, has been quoted as saying.

Doing the dishes can be work of art.

It's the brick laying versus the cathedral building once again.

Many great talents reported they did not enjoy the practice of their talent. English writer Roald Dahl for one.

But were they telling the truth or were they walking with a limp before losing their canes and doing back flips like Gene Wilder in the 1971 film adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?

Writer-Director Ilir Pristine whose latest feature Florrie (2019) premiered this July had this to say about the audience. "What they had in common was a strong emotional response to Florrie, but their opinions were as unique as themselves."

I took this to mean the audience is important because without the audience there is no artist. But the audience does not matter because writing for so many would be writing for no one and would satisfy no one and evoke strong emotional responses in no one.

The audience does not matter.
The audience is important.

But the art is from a particular state of mind.

Knock knock.

Who's there?