Eight things for Feb, all which call us home within
from Joan Didion's ways of exercising self-compassion to how Nick Cave honoured his muse by declining his MTV award in this letter.
a. I am sandwiching us between Søren Kierkegaard quotes this month:
“Of all ridiculous things the most ridiculous seems to me, to be busy — to be a man who is brisk about his food and his work.”
In her 1968 anthology, Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Joan Didion considers her habit of keeping a journal, in an essay titled “On Keeping a Notebook.” Along with wondering what and why she wanted to remember certain things, she also kept a record of “past selves.” Didion was acutely aware that we are always changing, and used her journal to look back and see who she used to be in understanding and compassion.
“I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise, they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind’s door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends.” — Joan Didion
A flourish of approval, a krul is a Dutch symbol used in grading to show the text has been seen and agreed with. And, I cannot help but wonder if every interaction is seeking a krul?
Add a street map to your Journal. Do up the street map of your house or work area. Add in where you go and why.
Look back on this in decades to come to help remember everyday memories.
The thing about art and connection. From Essay Art Objects by Jeanette Winterson, found in her 1996 collection Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery.
The true artist is connected. The true artist studies the past, not as a copyist or a pasticheur will study the past, those people are interested only in the final product, the art object, signed sealed and delivered to a public drugged on reproduction. The true artist is interested in the art object as an art process, the thing in being, the being of the thing, the struggle, the excitement, the energy, that have found expression in a particular way. The true artist is after the problem. The false artist wants it solved (by somebody else). If the true artist is connected, then he or she has much to give us because it is connection that we seek. Connection to the past, to one another, to the physical world… A picture, a book, a piece of music, can remind me of feelings, thinkings, I did not even know I had forgot.
Jeanette Winterson
Octavia Butler’s Affirmations on the back of her notebook, The Huntington Library:
Decline when it honours who you are to do so as did Nick Cave’s in his letter rejecting his MTV award:
21 Oct 96
To all those at MTV,
I would like to start by thanking you all for the support you have given me over recent years and I am both grateful and flattered by the nominations that I have received for Best Male Artist. The air play given to both the Kylie Minogue and P. J. Harvey duets from my latest album Murder Ballads has not gone unnoticed and has been greatly appreciated. So again my sincere thanks.
Having said that, I feel that it’s necessary for me to request that my nomination for best male artist be withdrawn and furthermore any awards or nominations for such awards that may arise in later years be presented to those who feel more comfortable with the competitive nature of these award ceremonies. I myself, do not. I have always been of the opinion that my music is unique and individual and exists beyond the realms inhabited by those who would reduce things to mere measuring. I am in competition with no-one.
My relationship with my muse is a delicate one at the best of times and I feel that it is my duty to protect her from influences that may offend her fragile nature.
She comes to me with the gift of song and in return I treat her with the respect I feel she deserves — in this case this means not subjecting her to the indignities of judgement and competition. My muse is not a horse and I am in no horse race and if indeed she was, still I would not harness her to this tumbrel — this bloody cart of severed heads and glittering prizes. My muse may spook! May bolt! May abandon me completely!
So once again, to the people at MTV, I appreciate the zeal and energy that was put behind my last record, I truly do and say thank you and again I say thank you but no…no thank you.
Yours sincerely,
Nick Cave.And before that last quote, another great excerpt from The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy:
1.b.
“ The unhappy person is one who has his ideal, the content of his life, the fullness of his consciousness, the essence of his being, in some manner outside of himself.”
Søren Kierkegaard
Here is to bringing all of our ideals for our self into our self and forging forth as our boldest self without all the busyness.
Thank you for sharing the Octavia Butler and Nick Cave material. I've not encountered that before.