digital and traditional

when I do digital art, I carefully select and adjust the colours and effects, but when I do traditional art, I don't want to have to think about that, so I just select a pencil/crayon/marker/pen at random and use it as I see fit ||| I make sure they all get used though...I keep all my pencils, etc in one set of containers - cups and tupperware - and then, once I've used one I put it in a different container \\\ then, when the 'used' container gets pretty full, or sometimes when I start a new image, I transfer all the implements back to the original containers and start the process again 

the great thing about digital art is that it's so adjustable - there are an endless amount of settings, colours, adjustments and effects you can do, and, unlike traditional art, you can try something to see how it looks and then undo it. You can change sizes shapes and colours as you go. You can delete and add different features. You can choose whether or not the different media you apply - pencil, paint, etc - interfere with each other

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I'm reading Feed by Mira Grant. it's timely because it's about a virus, but this one turns people into zombies, and the world is rife with them. I also like it because it's about blogging. aside from their adventures with zombies, the novel is about the blogs of the three main characters as they reflect on their life experiences and the state of the world in their own way. the two main characters write kind of journalistic blogs, and the third character, who seems like a secondary character, writes a fictional blog. so, it has a lot of relevant and interesting (at least to me) themes

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I've never been a big fan of Nietzsche, mainly because of his opposition to Christianity, but one idea he expressed that I find very interesting and have thought a lot about is: 

Whatever we have words for, that we have already got beyond. In all talk there is a grain of contempt. (translated by Walter Kaufmann)

Marie Cardinal would probably disagree. She wrote a book called The Words to Say It (1976), which is a true account of how she recovered from mental illness through the process of finding the words to express her issues. but then, that actually supports Nietzsche's contention // just not in the way I think he meant it // because Marie Cardinal's use of words did correspond to 'getting beyond' her mental health issues. And maybe there was also a grain of contempt in her words ⇾ 

I remember reading part from the end of the book and I was really surprised. I had thought that she would have a really kind and friendly relationship with her therapist who had been instrumental in her recovery, but from what I read, she kind of despised him for some reason. She was really glad to 'get beyond' not just her disorder but her relationship with him. 

So Nietzsche's quote is not necessarily inconsistant with the idea that the use of language is meaningful and worthwhile. 

Here's the quote from the end of The Words to Say It (translated from the French by Pat Goodheart 1983):

"Doctor, I am going to settle our accounts. I will not be coming here anymore. I feel able to live alone now. I feel strong. My mother transmitted the Thing to me, you have transmitted the analysis, they are in perfect balance, I thank you for it."

"You don't have to thank me, it's you who came here to find what you were looking for. I could not have done anything without you."

"Goodbye, Doctor."

"Goodbye, Madame. I'll be here if you need me. I will be happy to hear how you're doing if you consider it necessary to tell me."

Inviolable little man, so he's going to maintain the role to the end! 

The door closes behind me. In front of me, the cul-de-sac, the city, the country and an appetite for life and for building as big as the earth itself. 

So, the contempt is very real and undeniable, but it seems to be a different thing from what Nietzsche was talking about. Or maybe it's an interesting and extreme example of what he was talking about. 

Her reference to 'the Thing' is not some kind of euphemism or personal code - it relates to psychoanalysis....and that opens up all kinds of interesting (and complicated) links to Freud, Lacan and other theorists, and to the relationship between words and thoughts, theory and literature. 

I think, to simplify, you could say that 'the thing' is the central problem or concern of the individual...it's what all their attention is focused on, but the problem is that the thing can't be focused on - it's too complex and self-contradictory (or ironic). It embodies opposites - love and hate, apathy and desire, disturbance and composure. 

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there's a book that I've never yet read the whole of, but I've always felt like, more than any other book I know, you can read a section from this book and it's satisfying in itself...each section you read is like a segment of a mandarin - delicious and self-contained. 

it was that quality that made me buy the book. I'd never heard of it before, but I picked it up and read part and really liked it. I actually did have a similar experience with another book - The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath || but this other book I'm referring to is Reading by Moonlight: How Books Saved a Life (2010) by Brenda Walker. It's about her reading experiences and thoughts when she was being treated for cancer. 

Here's an example - arbitrarily picked - of what I mean about the self-contained quality of this book. She's writing about The Tale of Genji and modern day Kyoto, and in the midst of that there's this:

We wouldn't have a passion for storytelling if we cared only for the world of facts, because storytelling is a way of adjusting the facts, of lending some and not others weight and significance, of arranging them in a time and an order that we determine for ourselves. 

That observation is anchored into her story, but you don't need the story to make sense of it. If you just read that quote and nothing else, you would have something to think about - you would have taken something away from the book. 

and like I said, i get that sense from the whole book. ironically, that quality of not needing to read the rest of the book makes you want to read the rest of the book.

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nobody else can hear music the way you do. there's this urge we all have to get people to listen to the music we like - to kind of coerce them into it if necessary

but they don't hear what you hear \\\

maybe one day we'll have the technology to be able to play music for other people in a way where they hear it like you do...no, that's probably impossible

but even if we don't hear the same thing there is a consensus...like, everyone who likes particular songs or artists agrees that they are good. 

a concert is a very communal thing (one of the connotations of the word concert is unity \ conformity \ togetherness e.g. we did something 'in concert'....everyone is listening to the same sounds, but it's also a personal thing because each person will hear the music in their own way

the way that beliefs influence perception of facts

I've been enjoying reading, on and off, Bloom's book about literary genius: Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (2002). He rightly points out that 'Very few readers would be untroubled by the phrase "the genius of Jesus", so he doesn't include Jesus among the 100, but he does write about the apostle Paul, the 'Yahwist' (the writer of one of the manuscripts that was [so it is thought by some experts] combined with other writings to form the first five books of the Bible), and Muhammad. Bloom actually published a translation from the Hebrew of 'The book of J' (the work of the Yahwist) of which we only have fragments. He didn't translate it - David Rosenberg did - but his The Book of J, includes his commentary and interpretation of the book. 

I'm looking forward to reading it. Just like with the Qur'an, my familiarity with the Bible makes it really interesting to read about the same people, events and subjects in a different text. I find the Qur'an especially interesting on the Old Testament characters - like Abraham, Moses, Jacob, Ishmael (who is more favoured by the Qur'an), etc. A lot of the accounts from the Qur'an of those characters are compatible with the Bible. 

It's easy to understand how, as a non-Christian, Bloom sees Paul as creatively misreading (Bloom's term for revising, and wilfully misinterpretting the original text in order to hijack it for oneself) the gospel - the original message of Jesus. 

I read (part of) a book that had some fascinating things to say about the old testament, but I ended up not reading any further because I flipped to the very end and the final sentence of the book is: 'You are God'. Spoiler alert: no, I am not God. Not even on my very good days. The book is God: A Human History (2017) by Reza Aslan, and the interesting thing he writes about the Old Testament, besides what he writes about links between other ancient texts and cultures and the Hebrew Bible - which is interesting, but the most interesting thing to me, was his argument that there were two separate and very different conceptions of God that were held by the Israelites. 

When God appeared to Moses in the burning bush to tell him to return to Egypt and lead the Israelites out, Moses was living with a Midianite tribe and his father in law was a Midianite priest so, Reza Aslan suggests that Yahweh (the name of the God who appeared to Moses) is a Midianite deity. Even though God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites that 'the God of your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob has sent me to you', Aslan argues that:

This claim would have come as something of a surprise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Because the fact of the matter is that these biblical patriarchs did not worship a Midianite desert deity called Yahweh. They worshipped an altogether different god - a Canaanite deity they knew as El. 

When I first read that, I thought it was interesting, but now, I think Reza Aslan is putting too much emphasis on names and cultural difference. He doesn't believe that there is one true God, so he's arguing from that premise. If you believe there is one true God, which Christians, Jews and Muslims all do, it doesn't really matter that he was called by a different label in a different culture. It's like saying I worship a different God from French people because they call God, Dieu, or, converesely, that Christians whose first language is Arabic are really Muslims because they call God Allah and use some of the same phrases that Muslims use, like In sha Allah, Masha Allah, and Alhamdulillah. 

The word 'El' is simply the word for God in ancient semitic languages. It's not even strictly tied to the idea of there being one God. The word 'elohim' in the Hebrew Bible usually means God - the one God - but sometimes it refers to a plurality of gods. 

The name Yahweh developed out of the special new way that God began to reveal himself, starting with Moses and the burning bush and eventually to Israel and hence to the world. Here's the quote from the Bible (Exodus 3:13 - 15):

Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: this is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

The 'LORD' that I highlighted - that's the word that became Yahweh. Originally it was rendered YHWH, so who knows how it was actually pronounced, but in this text that word is connected with the verb hayah, to be. The Israelites until that point had known God by various names and designations, but here God is establishing the particular name that he was to be known by from then on, as he revealed himself more fully to them. The introductory part where he talks about 'I am' is interesting. 'I am who I am' is from the hebrew: ehyeh asher ehyeh, and if we translate “He Brings into Existence Whatever Exists”, we get "Yahweh-Asher-Yahweh". So Yahweh is more than just the word that gets translated as 'LORD' in the English Bible, it's also a statement about God's character and his eminence. 

pieces

when I used to paint with watercolours (which I haven't done in a long time) I always had the strong feeling that I was working with something I was only partly in control of. I was managing the materials more than I was controlling them. 

anything could happen

one time I sprinkled some salt on my work, because it looked kind of tasty, and it created this really nice star-like effect because of the way that the salt absorbs the water and it gets absorbed in little streams rather than evenly in a circle around each grain of salt

so you just combine the things and the art creates itself

I think there's a similar principle at work in all forms of creativity - art, writing, music

when you separate a portion of the work, it becomes more concentrated. like for example, the phrase above ⇾ 'anything could happen' ⇽ has so much more meaning than it would if it was part of a sentence. being separate like that means that all the meaning has to be concentrated in those three words. 

or if you separate part of a painting or image from the rest, the colours become more vibrant and the details stand out more 

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