ToC 2012, Stage 7, breakaway
Those dogs are tight!
Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” is the perfect pace for a good fast run.
That is all.
The issue here is not class envy but class entrenchment. The fact that they were born rich is irrelevant. They had no choice in the matter. But the fact that they appear to want to give even more to those who already have a great deal while denying much to those who have little is unforgiveable.
Gary Younge, the Guardian, 6 May 2012
Tagged buzzword bingo
- Better cross functional coordination and more effective lateral processes
- Performed with minimal disruption
The telephone and visitors are the work destroyers.
E. Hemingway, as told to G. Plimpton, Spring 1958, the Paris Review
Another sign that the Fourth Amendment is completely gone:
Let’s put the lie to rest, stop demanding that cops keep breaking the law again by filing false documents at the behest of the administration, and put up a big sign at the midtown tunnel: All persons subject to search.
The choice has been made and the Constitution lost. At least show New Yorkers the courtesy of being honest about it.
For those of you who don’t remember, this is what it used to say:
Tagged another amendment downThe right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I still believe, though, that it is very bad for a writer to talk about how he writes. He writes to be read by the eye and no explanations or dissertations should be necessary. You can be sure that there is much more there than will be read at any first reading and having made this it is not the writer’s province to explain it or to run guided tours through the more difficult country of his work.
–E. Hemingway, as told to George Plimpton, Spring 1958, the Paris Review
On symbolism:
It is hard enough to write books and stories without being asked to explain them as well. Also it deprives the explainers of work. If five or six or more good explainers can keep going why should I interfere with them? Read anything I write for the pleasure of reading it. Whatever else you find will be the measure of what you brought to the reading.
–E. Hemingway, as told to George Plimpton, Spring 1958, the Paris Review
Trying to write something of permanent value is a full-time job even though only a few hours a day are spent on the actual writing. A writer can be compared to a well. There are as many kinds of wells as there are writers. The important thing is to have good water in the well, and it is better to take a regular amount out than to pump the well dry and wait for it to refill.
–E. Hemingway, as told to George Plimpton, Spring 1958, the Paris Review
The Clock
I just finished reading the New Yorker article about The Clock [1].
Serendipity. Someone was just commenting to me about how serendipity was hard to come by these days, since no one goes to the library, or reads newspapers, or looks at microfiche. One could argue that serendipity just hasn’t been around that long. Aside from noting that public libraries and newspapers are at best only a few centuries old (Ben Franklin invented the lending library and the American version of the newspaper), the only thing that’s happened with the demise of newspapers and research libraries, and with the advent of the net is that only the nature of serendipity has changed.
On a Wednesday in late August, I was bored and checked plane fares to CDG on a lark, and saw that I could fly to Paris next Thursday for less than $1k. I emailed dogsitters, my eight bosses, and didn’t book a room until the next Tuesday. I got off the plane in Paris on Friday, stayed as long as I wanted, then booked a train to Venice. I booked a hotel on the train on the way to Venice.
In Venice, I found out that both the Venice Film Festival and the Biennale were going on. I met an Austrian film distributor in Harry’s Bar, who gave me her ticket to the “Ides of March” afterparty because she couldn’t go. I didn’t meet George or Ryan, but I did strike up a conversation with a nice German art curator, who invited me to come see the exhibit she had curated. And, as I got an ice-cream after I got off the last boat back from Lido, the nice ice-cream vendor offered to show me around Venice the next day.
Serendipity.
As we were wandering around the hot Biennale, we stopped to rest shanks mare in the cool room where there were several white couches and a film playing. I am not normally a fan of video art [2], but I ended up sitting for hours watching this mesmerizing spectacle. I don’t like to read about art in advance, and I don’t like to read the plaques – I just want to let the art hit me without someone else’s preconceptions influencing what I see. So, not knowing the first thing about it, it took me minutes to figure out what was going on, and more to realize that I was watching it in “real time.”
Eventually I got up and wandered around the rest of the Biennale, but ended up coming back and watching even more of “The Clock.” It was only much later that I found out that it won awards, and had become famous, and that Venice was one of the first places it was shown.
So, serendipity. Yeah, it’s different than it was. And it’ll be different again when petroleum shortages don’t allow anyone not in the 1% to hop on a plane and go overseas. More like it was before the concept of serendipity was invented. I’ve got this feeling that the net, and a couple hundred RSS feeds keep the serendipity occurrence high, if not as focussed as it was in the past, when we found it in libraries, or newspapers, and not on Boing Boing or Gizmodo, or because someone in the 20% could afford to hop on a plane at a moment’s notice.
[1] Yeah, I run a little behind. I caught up about six months on my month-long trip to Hungover^WHannover. But I’m still only up to March.
[2] In my experience, I find that mostly it’s just shocking for shock’s sake, or if it’s not, it’s boring.
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