Life writing notes
Death: funeral and ritual questions. Travel: writing from life. Climate: Finnigan brothers observations.
Hope everyone has a wonderful New Year
Last calls: Theatre: Come see my show Jan 3
Death: funeral and ritual questions
Travel: writing from life
Climate: Finnigan brothers observations
Education : 27 April 2024, UnConference: educating otherwise
I have snatched some rehearsal time for my show on Jan 3. Do come! I’m not a trained performer. I rehearse and perform as a version of myself. Not the radical transformation that actors perform. I do think there is something special about the creative act. It keeps me in touch with some important parts of myself and my brain. If you can’t come but want to contribute feel free to send answer in below. Hit reply or send anon in the form here.
What song(s)/music would you like at your funeral?
What would you like someone to say about you or read at your funeral?
Do you have something unsaid? If you were to die this week, is there something you have not said to someone ? Or if someone else were to die? Would you like to write it here now?
Is there anything you’d like to confess?
I have been wanting to recreate a zen practice that priest Ruth Ozeki has done. The blurb on the book she wrote:
“What did your face look like before your parents were born? Who are you? What is your true self? These are the questions in Ruth Ozeki's mind as she challenges herself to spend three hours gazing into her own reflection, recording every thought and detail.
I haven’t as yet carved out the time this holiday break. I feel I need a good stretch of energy for this. But, I think it will be an intriguing exercise to follow.
I note on YT there are people who silently work together (on their own projects). In a time of digital connection, sitting quietly still seems to have an impact.
My friend David, sent me this about (a fledgling YouTuber) Didit, who sat for 2 hours doing nothing. This spawned a whole set people copying this! There is something compelling about this practice.
Another practice I have dabbled in this year is writing from life, in particular on everyday or work travels. Anoushka gave me Lauren Elkin’s (travel shaped) book.
“Lauren Elkin composed the diary entries in No. 91/92: A Parisian Bus Diary on her iPhone 5c from September 2014 to May 2015 as she was riding the bus to the university where she taught. It was a difficult and traumatic seven months that covered the Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks as well as the loss of a pregnancy.”
And,
“Georges Perec’s An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (1974) was an obvious inspiration for Elkin (which she discussed in one entry), as this really is as simple and as complicated as notes jotted down whilst riding a bus in Paris. She includes observations about the clothes and hairstyles of others, the odd smells that a bus crushed with commuters takes on, bus etiquette, as well as the occasional view from the window. In various interviews and articles, Elkin also said she was conscious of Virginia Woolf, Zadie Smith and Annie Ernaux as she was taking her notes.” From Brona’s books.
Here are some of my notes of the last few months.
She sits with a flag in her hand. Constantly she tugs her hood down on her hoodie.
Unexpectedly hot. Saturday early evening noise. Train is full. Where is everyone going? An all ages baby child family, couples, work men, elderly ladies.
The pregnant lady - braces - stares ahead.
The three work men. Two of them chatter in Italian over the third who is phone glued. The lady putting on her back back almost trips but balances herself last minute. Her nails are bitten short.
A grey hair lady wears a Barbour coat. The coat is as faded as her hair.
The boy with the scooter wears a bright red helmet that he dutifully keeps on the entire journey.
And, here a longer note from a plane work trip.
I’m sat next to a girl. I think she is 10 years old. She lives in Morocco but has French, Austrian and English roots. She has clear aligners and a 70% English accent. This year she wants to be a fashion designer. Last year an actor. She loves shopping. She explains the Barbie film to me.
I explain Giotto and Claudia Goldin. We hold each others attention for a long while before she has to do her Kumon English homework.
Her nickname is Fruit. Her father borrows her headphones. Her skin sparkles with sun and her bangles speaks to inexpensive jewelry of young girls almost everywhere. She tells me the story of her name. My father wanted to call me Johanna. He was away for my birth. My mother said I’ve just had the most unbelievable pain. You don’t get to choose the name. I choose Frieda.
We talk about Frieda Kahlo.
The flight is full. Body smells linger. The person in front of me is face first on his fold out table, maybe asleep.
…I’ve found it a useful practice to knock oneself out of the “stare into the phone doom” loop travelling on tubes or buses. Also good notes for forming characters. This was emphasised to me on reading Lydia Davis on writing.
Lydia Davis writes:
“I have always kept a notebook by my side when I’m working or trying to work, and it becomes the repository for any stray thought or description that occurs to me—I try to catch every one. In those years I wrote a lot in the notebook because of a certain restlessness: if I was having trouble with a piece of writing—and I usually was—I could at least write something in the notebook. I could at least record in the notebook how much trouble I was having with what I was trying to write. Or I could record an idea for another story, as Kafka did in his notebooks. I might never continue the story, or I might continue it right away or later. The notebook might also contain the germ of an idea that would later find its way into a story without my realizing where the idea came from. “
I’m reading her essays which I have dipped into before. This time I’m more aware of slowly having built up more writing muscles over the last few years. More observations resonate. Here is a review of the essays (NYT, paywall) (can send you gift article if you are very interested and have run out of free).
Davis returns to a series of virtues repeatedly: clarity, compression, frank emotion, oddness. She has a preference for overheard speech, “tangled, yet correct, syntax,” and, very often, for writing that reinterprets a text or pokes fun at conventional, sentimental writing. The book itself embodies these qualities with its commentaries on writers and its puckish awareness of its own genre — those valedictory sermons on craft from the established writer, those moist and vague maunderings on the virtue of “storytelling.”
Her essay on “Thirty Recommendations for Good Writing Habits” is in a 10 point form here (lit hub). I think she gave this to a university masterclass at some point.
The following are just my personal pieces of advice. They won’t be the same as someone else’s, and they may not fit your life or practice, but maybe you’ll pick up something useful.
Take notes regularly.…Observe your own activity
…Observe your own feelings (but not at tiresome length):
…Observe the behavior of others, both animal and human:
…Observe the weather, and be specific
…Always work (note, write) from your own interest
…Be mostly self-taught.
…Revise notes constantly
…Sentences or ideas reported from reality out of context can be wonderful. But then, when and if you use them in a piece of finished writing, beware of how much context you give them.
…How should you read? What should the diet of your reading be? Read the best writers from all different periods; keep your reading of contemporaries in proportion—you do not want a steady diet of contemporary literature. You already belong to your time.
My friend and some time collaborator, David Finnigan, has written some climate observations with his brother Chris.
Chris makes a set of positive observations including how emissions might have peaked, the future role of Asia, and how roof top solar in Australia is enabling Aus’ energy transition.
“The dominance of rooftop solar in the Australian grid, with over half of households now predicted to have rooftop solar by 2030, is arguably Australia's best climate story to showcase to the world. A real-life experiment in how inconspicuous suburban streets can morph over time into becoming a central part of the electricity grid. At the same time shifting power from the major electricity companies towards the consumers-turned-producers.”
David picks up on cultural narratives including blame on marginalised groups, XR tactics vs Just Oil tactics, and ocean tipping points. David observes the media paid more attention (seemingly) to Just Oil disruption than it did to XR’s Big One (protest) even though XR probably brought more than 100,000 people out to the streets. I am no longer sure whether media is a good barometer of the people (For instance, very little coverage to a number of people who have set themselves alight in protest), or of policy, but it does seem likely both sets of tactics will continue.
I observe a paradox at the extremes of this idea that pure utilitarians also face. For instance, if (naive) utilitarians only ever valued life, no matter what that life was, and never valued art or the humanities. Such that there was only ever life left, but there was no art. Then many of the the things that humans find worth living for - art - would be gone. (See philosopher Bernard Williams). And so there would be limited value in being human any more.
Similarly, if Just Oil destroyed all art in order to save humanity… would humanity be worth still saving? Surely, one could argue, a little art to save humanity would be OK… which reminds my of the trolley problems - that we chat about in my podcast with David Edmonds.
I don’t know the answer. Cultural change does seem to be part of the solution, but what change, how to make it and what stories to tell ourselves all have to be written.
Thank you for reading! Have a wonderful New Year!