journal — seven

On having no time, finding time, and writing about it

Hello, reader.

I’m currently saving pennies & pounds to study creative writing & have my short stories reviewed by a literary agent.

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leaves turn to autumn in Frome

Hello,

Here are ten things I’d like to remember from this week.

one

‘The point of doing nothing, as I define it, isn’t to return to work refreshed and ready to be more productive, but rather to question what we currently perceive as productive.’

From How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, which I finished this week.

‘I realise that I have left part of myself in a place where I shall probably never come back.’

From Shame by Annie Ernaux, who I’m yet to read.

two

Annie Ernaux has won this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature.

This New Yorker article describes Ernaux as a ‘memoirist who mistrusts her own memories’ — sensible, I think, when ‘accurate’ records of lives, with our biases & so many forgotten seconds, seem false & fruitless if not paired with that humility.

This article gets close to my reasoning for previously trying & failing to journal.

‘In the celebrated biographer James Boswell’s first diary entry, written on arrival to the capital in November 1762, he expressed the wishful belief that the practice of keeping a diary would make him a better person, since “knowing that I am to record my transactions will make me more careful to do well.” However, a friend later pointed out that Boswell’s diary seemed to have the reverse effect on his behaviour, since it encouraged him to “hunt about for adventures to adorn it with.” Call it the observer effect: oscillating between saintliness and rakishness, Boswell, when placed under his own gaze, was incapable of acting naturally.’

Back to Ernaux, though, and we see an entirely different sentiment, in A Girl’s Story and I Remain in Darkness respectively:

‘Where are the eyes of my childhood, those fearful eyes she had thirty years ago, the eyes that made me?’

‘I started to make a literary being of myself, someone who lives as if her experiences were to be written down someday.’

Is it so bad, then, to write your life into a life worth writing about?

(If you’re interested: Fitzcarraldo Editions, who have published eight translations of her books to date, French to English, offer previews on their website — something more publishers should consider.)

three

Midjourney is a bit of kit that creates AI art.

Nonsense, I thought, upon hearing about this the first time: type in a few keywords and get an entirely original array of ‘art’ — but I was blown away, to the point of using up my free trial. Below is an example of simply typing in a handful of words I associated with How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell: crow, woman, reading, rose garden. Think of the other applications, though, beyond this Dali-oddness — memory recollection for therapy, the expansion of imagination.

(I’ll send this to the author and see what they think.)

four

For film, I’ve caught up a bit on my MUBI subscription (here’s a month free if you want to try it out). I started with The Box, a music video for The Orbital featuring Tilda Swinton — weird as hell, certainly a reminder of why MUBI can break the routine, and a very stark, detached look on the overwhelming pace of our world.

Hideous came next: as MUBI describes it, an ‘opulent, unapologetic reckoning with HIV stigma’, emerging from a meeting of minds between Yann Gonzalez and The xx’s Oliver Sim, starring queer icons Jimmy Somerville and Bimini. Striking.

five

My partner no-context sent me the painting below by Joseph-Désiré Court: Scene from the Great Flood (1826). It’s a depiction of Noah's biblical flood, now housed in the Museum of Fine Arts of Lyon, considered to be an allegory of a man clinging to his past by saving his father, rather than save his own son (the future) or wife (the present).

Years back, I went through a short phase of spending an hour looking at a painting, twice on my laptop and once in a booked session in Tate Britain’s private archives, and simply writing what came to mind; whatever my attention conjured. I loved the experience, so another thing to add to the list of things to re-explore.

Scene from the Great Flood by Joseph-Désiré Court (1826)

six

An answer to one of my morning Heardles this week was Midnight City by the French electronic music band M83, from their 2011 album: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming.

Wait, from the same album, was an obsession of mine a couple of years ago, soundtracking a difficult time in my life in which I feel as though I made life difficult for others, and hated myself for it — without paying much attention to the lyrics themselves, it was simply one of those songs that howled out into the abyss, mirrored the ferocity of how I felt, in whichever direction that howl may be directed. (Coincidentally, it found its way onto my sister’s labour playlist, too, and she said something similar: it was simply one of those songs that deserved its spot on a feels playlist.)

I’ve started trying to understand those feels a little more. I listened through most of the album while writing this letter — an electric rush through the rising sun of dawn — and, this time, paid attention to Wait and its lyrics in much the same way as I did with Florence + the Machine’s Heavy in Your Arms a few weeks ago.

give your tears
to the tide
no time
no time

The no time line is repeated like a mantra, as if it were responding to the song’s title, forming its significance & meaning if you wished to assign it. It shares a similar message, I think, to lyrics from The Weepies’ World Spins Madly On.

I thought of you
and where you’ve gone
and the world spins madly on

While Wait shouts it and The World Spins Madly On meditates on it, both urge us to see that time is finite, we must move on, because the world around us is doing so already without us.

seven

Representations of the 12-step addiction programme vary dramatically. In Flanagan’s Midnight Mass series, by coincidence having an alcoholic following the programme, is heavy on the religion / demons / angels. By listening to Recovery, read by its author Russell Brand, we read (or in my case, hear) jovial meditations switched to remorse and retribution.

Both, though, are clear on the need — as Father Paul shouts — to be entirely, brutally honest with oneself. In the episode I refer to, we hear of the protagonist’s anger that Father Paul does not feel remorse for something awful he’s done. Once honesty is demanded, though, he admits that anger is actually jealousy of the other person’s ability to feel OK with what they’ve done.

Honesty is freedom.

eight

This recent aerial footage of orcas hunting white sharks (dyk: scientists often don’t use great because there’s nothing technically greater or lesser about them) reminded me to look into one of the tasks I’d vaguely set myself the other week: explore cultural representations of the mutual (?) sensation of connection between humans & non-human creatures.

I grew up with & around dogs. Cats had always freaked me out — jumpy, pointy, moody, itchy things; magnets for cars & dissected dead things. My ex-partner had grown up with them, though, so the first animal I adopted as an adult was my forest cat: Boudica.

She’s survived toxic poisoning & a battle with a car; she’s now an indoor cat, better for the environment, my nervous disposition, and her own little anxieties. When she was sick, and there’s been many times that she’s been sick, I’d sleep next to her. I talk to her regularly — she’s remarkably vocal in response — and she seems to know when to give me space or company (unless she’s hungry, in which case: fuck my needs, present the food). Every day, she anchors me into how simple a happy life can be; she makes me feel forgiven, needed, and loved.

All that from a cat! So, I wanted to find cultural reflections that explored a similar shared recognition, connection, with humans. (But not just animals with voices or their perspectives, like recent reads of Watership Down or The Incredible Journey — as much as I enjoyed those, this isn’t that.) I’ve come up with an initial reading list and will spend the next week looking into other things to meditate on. (I’ll share the full list soon.)

nine

I went to my local library in Frome to see if any of those were on the shelves (they have a surprisingly excellent selection for a small town) — instead, I realised that the books from the Man Booker 2022 longlist I’d asked to be ferried-in had been waiting for me. (Their system had forgotten to let me know.)

The turn of the season comes on 31 October, so my reading list before then (helped by a one-week holiday in Tunisia just before) will need to be planned as soon as possible.

ten

Finally, theoretically my favourite part of the week, but also the part that’s taken nearly two months to catch-up on: planning!

• This week, I finished reading How to do Nothing by Jenny Odell (2019).

• I’m still reading The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (1859-60), and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins (2011). The former was originally serialised, so I’ve scheduled a reminder to read a morning, afternoon, and evening chapter to get through it a little more consistently (I’m note sure whether I’m enjoying it, but I’m also not sure I’m giving it a good enough shot). Hunger Games is easy reading, so I’ll keep it to the evenings in bed.

• I’ll continue to fiddle with my story log.

• I lost track of time and didn’t get to the full list. Maybe this coming week.

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my new carboot mirror, positioned to frame my personal library