An online commonplace book
No man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him.
– Dr. William James, from the Varieties of Religious Experience
Please.
Smith, Keri. How to Be an Explorer of the World: Portable Life Museum. United Kingdom, Penguin Publishing Group, 2008.
When she sat still, her swirling thoughts settled like tea leaves at the bottom of a cup. Then she could see clearly. She knew herself. She was a dreamer. A wonderer. A collector. She had to keep looking.
But she also had to earn a living.
– Laura Alary
Maria Mitchell was an astronomer, teacher, librarian, and entrepreneur (she started her own school. I’d consider that being an entrepreneur.)
She discovered the comet C/1847 T1. This was a response to the challenge put forth from King Frederick VI of Denmark offering a gold medal to the first person to discover a new comet.
Once again, picture books, children’s books, are underrated.
Alary, Laura. The Astronomer Who Questioned Everything: The Story of Maria Mitchell. Canada, Kids Can Press Ltd, 2022.
People called it a thinking machine, but Ada knew better. The intelligence was not in the machine itself, but in the genius of its designer.
– Diane Stanley
Ada Lovelace understood where the genius of the Difference Engine came from – Charles Babbage.
Does this quote still apply today? Is the genius now in the machine?
Again, picture books, children’s books, are underrated.
Stanley, Diane. Ada Lovelace, Poet of Science: The First Computer Programmer. United States, Simon & Schuster/Paula Wiseman Books, 2016.
There are two things that men should never weary of, goodness and humility; we get none too much of them in this rough world among cold, proud people;
– David Balfour
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Kidnapped. New York: Running Press, 1989. pp147
My favourite illustration in the whole book is the very first. It shows the White Rabbit looking at his pocket-watch, worrying that it’s late. I copied that White Rabbit hundreds of times in my sketchbooks, trying to capture the worried expression in his eye, the folds of his coat and the wonderful shading at his feet.
– Chris Riddell
You can still see the influence of John Tenniel‘s Alice in Wonderland’s drawings in Chris Riddell’s work today.
What’s the illustration or picture you’ve copied hundreds of times in your sketchbooks?
Carroll, Lewis., Riddell, Chris. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (Puffin Classics) London: Puffin Books, 2015. (from the introduction,pp vi)
“Whatever you come across…you will be able to note down immediately… be it an anecdote or a fable or an illustrative example or a strange incident or a maxim or a witty remark or a remark notable for some other quality or a proverb or a metaphor or a simile.”
Erasmus of Rotterdam
From the commonplacing tradition comes Zibaldones.
Zibaldones are similar to commonplace books, but they incorporate pictures, physical memories. Ancient scrapbooks if you will, but with an educational and cataloguing bent.
The Atlas Obscura article: How to Keep a Zibaldone, the 14th Century’s Answer to Tumblr is a terrific primer.
Edgar Davids was one of the first players I talked to in my capacity as coach of Juventus. I liked him a lot, and I told him so immediately: “I like the way you play, your aggression, your determination, your decisiveness. It’s clear that you never yield the initiative, that you’re a fighter, a battler.” I went on to catalog his physical endowments, his skills, and his natural gifts. He just stared at me and never said a word. More than a stare, he glared at me, like I was a turd he’d accidentally stepped on. He listened, closemouthed. Finally, when I stopped talking, he enunciated a concept: “You know, I can play football too.” True, though technique was never his strong suit.
– Carlo Ancelotti
Surprising to read that Ancelotti felt technique wasn’t David’s strength. Ancelotti is correct, David’s tenacity and battling spirit stood out above all, but Davids also continued that Dutch tradition of exceptional technique.
Ancelotti, Carlo., Alciato, Aleesandro. Carlo Ancelotti: The Beautiful Game of an Ordinary Genius. United States: Random House Digital-Wholesale, 2010. pp145
Characteristically, where many might see the picturesque aspects of la vie de bohème, Hockney notices the inner discipline of that way of life: an element that must have been essential since these Bohemians were driven and hugely productive people.
DH: Picasso would go to the Deux Magots and the Flore most evenings in the 1930s. His studio was a few minutes away. But he always left at ten to eleven, and he’d be in bed by eleven. He would never drink much alcohol – a bit strange for a Spaniard that. I think he must have had a routine, because he worked every day of his life, just as I do.
It’s easy to think the bohemian life style of decades past was completely unhinged, artists living free from any type of restraint. But as David Hockney and Martin Gayford describe, discipline to the craft had it’s place.
Gayford, Martin, and Hockney, David. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson, 2021. pp57,58
I know I’m eight-two, but I feel thirty in the studio when I get going. I stand up to paint. I stand up to work, mostly. Sitting down is supposed to be bad for you, but everything is supposed to be bad for you. I just ignore it. My mother lived to be ninety-eight. You have to be very tough to live that long. I remember telling her over the tea table that Diana, the Princess of Wales, had been killed in a car accident. She said, ‘That’s very sad!’ Then she said, ‘Do you think there’s another cup in that pot?’ Fate has not been cancelled, has it?
– David Hockney
A surprising response from Hockney’s mother. Spring Cannot be Cancelled continues to surprise and delight. It’s an excellent dip from passage-to-passage book.
Gayford, Martin, and Hockney, David. Spring Cannot Be Cancelled: David Hockney in Normandy. United Kingdom, Thames & Hudson, 2021. pp80
Floodlights and Goalposts 