An online commonplace book
Great is liberty! Great is equality! I am their follower,
Helmsmen of nations, choose your craft....where you
sail I sail,
Yours is the muscle of life or death....your is the perfect
science....in you I have absolute faith.
From: Leaves of Grass 150th Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics), pg.156
I didn’t imagine Walt Whitman being an optimistic poet. The first few lines of Great Are the Myths is all Walt admiring people and ideas with intensity.
I’m trying to get into Walt Whitman’s work. But I underestimated the length of his poems.
So, I’m starting with his shorter poems. And typing them out into smaller, manageable pieces.
Seeing what I can find.
Great are the myths….I too delight in them,
Great are Adam and Eve….I too look back and accept them;
Great the risen and fallen nations, and their poets, women, sages, inventors, rulers, warriors and priests.
Great Are the Myths, Leaves of Grass. Whitman, Walt
A few thoughts on the enduring usefulness of index cards:
I fold an index card lengthwise in half, stick it in my back pocket along with a pen, and head out, knowing that if I have an idea, or see something lovely or strange enough worth remembering, I will be able to jot down a couple of words to remind me of it. Sometimes, if I overhear or think of an exact dialogue or a transition, I write it down verbatim. I stick the card in my backpocket. I might be walking along the salt marsh, or out at Phoenix Lake, or in the express line at Safeway, and suddenly I hear something wonderful that makes me want to smile or snap my fingers-as if it has just come back to me-and I take out my index card and scribble it down.
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, Anne Lamott, pg 134
Ivan Brunetti also incorporates index cards in many of his exercises from his book Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice. He suggests:
try orienting your index card horizontally instead of vertically. “Going wide” has two immediate benefits. First, it more closely approximates our eyes’ field of view and (perhaps not coincidentally) correlates with the proscenium’s composition space, seen not only in stage plays but also on film and computer screens. Second, it damningly highlights those unconsidered compositions that focus on the figure to the detriment of any surrounding environment. We’ve all seen examples: a character is cut off at the ankles and surrounded at the top, left, and right by an undeliberate emptiness, a vast halo of nothing, a rickety non-space, or what I call the Arch of Uninterestingness.
Cartooning: Philosophy and Practice, Brunetti, Ivan, pg. 42
I’ve used many types of notebooks. Moleskines (anyone else think that’s a gross name?), Field Notes, Composition books, Evernote, but index cards are the sharks of the stationary world – they adapt better than any note taking invention.
Their size allows me to scratch out a poem or sketch on the run without elbowing fellow passengers on the subway.
They are easy to catalog and store.
And they make perfect bookmarks, especially for library books. You can take notes without marking up the book.
For a short history on index cards. Yes, if you’re that much of a geek, that you would be interested in such a topic, click here.
“You are writing, say, about a grizzly bear. No words are forthcoming. For six, seven, ten hours no words have been forthcoming. You are blocked, frustrated, in despair. You are nowhere, and that’s where you’ve been getting. What do you do? You write, ‘Dear Mother.’ And then you tell your mother about the block, the frustration, the ineptitude, the despair. You insist that you are not cut out to do this kind of work. You whine. You whisper. You outline your problem, and you mention that the bear has a fifty-five inch waist and a neck more than thirty inches around but could run nose-to-nose with Secretariat. You say the bear prefers to lie down and rest. The bear rests fourteen hours a day. And you go on like that as long as you can. And then you go back and delete the ‘Dear Mother’ and all the whimpering and whining, and just keep the bear.”
Draft No. 4: John McPhee On the Writing Process, McPhee, John, pg 157,158
A trick to help loosen up your mind and get some words down on the page.
I’m hoping posting it here will help me remember to return to it when all feels impossible.
The way to learn to draw is by drawing. People who make art must not merely know about it. For an artist, the important thing is not how much he knows, but how much he can do. A scientist may know all about aeronautics without being able to handle an airplane. It is only by flying that he can develop the senses for flying. If I were asked what one thing more than any other would teach a student how to draw, I should answer, ‘Drawing – incessantly, furiously, painstakingly drawing.’
The Natural Way to Draw, Nicolaïdes, Kimon
An artist must have skin in the game.
The work, the practice of drawing everyday, is the path to improvement.
We all have that ideal person we want to be.
That imaginary, idealized person who drifts into our daydreams during a Wednesday afternoon budget meeting.
This imaginary-self is usually a mix of various people you admire. And everyone’s imaginary- self is different.
Some are a cross of Conan O’ Brian, Beyoncé and Martha Stewart.
For others it’s a mix of Joe Rogan, Bill Gates and Morgan Freeman.
And for others it’s part Frank Lloyd Wright, part Tony Bennett and part Jane Austin.
But my imaginary, idealized person? My imaginary-self?
A bear.
Robert Macfarlane describes him with incredible detail in his book Underland: A Deep Time Journey
There is something of the polar bear to Bjørnar: there in his powerful physique, his heftedness to the north, those white eyes, and of course in his name: Bjørnar, the Bear, from the Old Norse bjørn. He is an intense, intelligent presence; a person you would want fighting for you and would dread as an enemy. He is not without self-regard, but I do not begrudge him that.
There is also a strong mystical streak to Bjørnar: unexpected perhaps, in a man whose working life compels him daily to such pragmatism and self-reliance. But – as I will learn – Bjørnar looks often through things: hard into them and right through them with those pale eyes of his. He looks through people, through bullshit, and the through the surface of the sea.
Robert Macfarlane, Underland: A Deep Time Journey, pg 292-293, Chapter: The Edge.
A heftedness to the north.
A powerful physique.
The ability to look through the surface of the sea.
Add relentless, creative, box-to-box midfielder to the list and my imaginary-self’s profile is complete.
What traits does your imaginary-self possess?
And now some:
Heft - n. chiefly N. Amer. 1 weight. 2 Ability or influence.
Origin ME: prob. from HEAVE , on the pattern of words such as cleft and weft.
Some mornings, in a perfect world, you might wake up, have a coffee, finish meditation, and say, “Okay, today I’m going into the shop to work on a lamp.” This idea comes to you, you can see it, but to accomplish it you need what I call a “setup.” For example, you may need a working shop or a working painting studio. You may need a working music studio. Or a computer room where you can write something. It’s crucial to have a setup, so that, at any given moment, when you get an idea, you have the place and tools to make it happen.
If you don’t have a setup, there are many times when you get the inspiration, the idea, but you have no tools, no place to put it together. And the idea just sits there and festers. Over time, it will go away. You didn’t fulfill it-and that’s just a heartache.
David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish, pg 125
It’s easy to read this David Lynch quote and be discouraged.
A computer room? I’m not a CEO.
Music studio? Ha!
Workshop? I don’t even have a garage.
But be encouraged and remember:
Your setup could be a composition notebook you carry. Or the Pages app on your iPhone.
Maybe it’s the back corner desk, near the history section at the library. It could be the kitchen table after the apple juice and rice is wiped off.
If you do have a workshop, studio, or office, than make use of those places. But if you don’t, use what tools and space you do have.
Then go, go bring your ideas to bear.
In my 20s, I was an aspiring football coach. Not gridiron, but football-football. Soccer.
The first night of a weekend long D license course opened with an enthusiastic instructor. An A licensed coach who began the evening with a rant:
“We try to copy all these countries. We try to copy the Dutch. I don’t know why” he said. “Holland has never won the World Cup!”
This sparked some laughter and heads nodding in agreement. Even I, quietly agreed.
But then years later, I came across this passage in Brilliant Orange:
Sculptor Jeroen Henneman believes, ‘With the Dutch, the beauty is in the pitch. In the grass, but also in the air above it, where balls can curl and curve and drop and move like the planets in heaven. It is not only the field. The folding of air above it also counts. That is why the Arena stadium is so horrible. It is ugly and it seals off the heavens.’
Cruyff has been known to pass footballing judgement on the basis of sound alone. Ajax historian Evert Vermeer remembers him criticizing a player’s technique while looking away from the pitch. ‘He said: “His technique is no good.” “How can you tell?” Cruyff said: “It’s obvious. When he kicks the ball, the sound is wrong.” ‘
Henneman reckons that without knowing it, what the average Dutch footballer wants ‘is silence, a kind of quiet on the pitch, to feel the beautiful green grass and fresh air and the passes he receives. When you kick well, you have to touch the ground, to dig a little under the ball as in a golf shot. And you hear it. And it is nice to hear.’
Gerrie Muhren agrees: ‘Wind is the biggest enemy because you cannot hear the ball. You have to hear the ball during the game. You can hear from the sound it makes on the boot where the ball is going, how hard, how fast. You can tell everything.
Brilliant Orange, By David Winner, pg 135-136
Yes, coaching instructor from 12 years ago, that’s why you copy the Dutch.
I agree, all our youth teams don’t need to play 4-3-3. We don’t need to save-as the Dutch Vision of Youth Development presentation. Or even grow beautiful Tulip fields.
But what is worth copying is the Dutch appreciation of individual technique. An appreciation that goes deeper than foot placement, or how a players head is tilted.
It’s an appreciation of technique so precise it’s audible. Coaching at a place where you’re hearing the correct technique.
Next time you’re at a youth practice, or your daughters match, listen.
What do you hear?
Eyes of the World winked at me from the top shelf.
On the cover, Robert Capa was rockin’ a knit tie, Gerda a beret. I didn’t know who they were, but I knew they were special. I turned to chapter one and gave the first sentence a read:
As Robert Capa tells it: A metal ramp cranks open and lands with a splashing thud. Chilly dawn fog rushes into the craft where thirty soldiers sit shivering, crouched on benches. The floor sways, slick with vomit; the seas have been rough.
Reading that first sentence I realized, pictures of D-Day are so ubiquitous I never asked the question: Who took those photographs?
It’s easy to forget that amongst the soldiers, bullets, and death, were photographers like Robert Capa on the ground. Pioneers documenting war in a brave new way.
Floodlights and Goalposts 