Rabbit Holes
I'm currently working on something that might or might not become a book. It's important to me, yet at the same time I'm wracked with doubt. But that's not what I want to talk about. Instead, I want to talk about one of the reasons why despite all the doubt work on the book has been so rewarding: it's the rabbit holes. While chasing down a number of rabbit holes has slowed down the process of writing considerably, along the way I have learned a lot of things that I might have never heard of, had I not been working on this book.
In the end, it might come down to this: all good writing entails a considerable aspect of self discovery and self betterment. I'm obviously in a different league than famous writers, those that publish book after book, those that get commission after commission (even if they're phoning half of them in), those that get book reviews in famous publications. Those people are in the Champions League -- I'm in whatever league it is where you try to make money on the side with all kinds of activities, while cherishing the few moments you can carve out for writing.
Maybe the Champions League writers would find my description of self discovery and self betterment naive. If they did, I'd feel sorry for them: if you have all the time in the world to write (and you don't have to worry about money because people will just throw it at you), it would feel outright sad to me if you didn't make use of one of the most amazing aspects of putting together words.
Typically, a rabbit hole opens itself up when after writing something I question what I just wrote: wait, what does this really mean? Can I look into this more deeply? Seeing a photograph of Masahisa Fukase's father's skull after his cremation, I wondered about the details of Japanese funerals. I started looking around and asking friends, and I ended up reading a book about the topic (which I might have recommended in one of my previous emails). I am not sure the whole process changed what I wrote all that much, but I got to learn more about Japan.
Now, I'm reading Maggie Nelson's The Art of Cruelty because in my writing, I had mentioned that I found aspects of cruelty in Fukase's and someone else's photography. To me, this seemed so obvious. But maybe there's more to unpack here? I don't know, yet (I'm only a third into the book), even though I'm thinking there will indeed be something that will have to be addressed.
I don't want to be going from one rabbit hole to the next. But I have no deadline for my book, and I don't have a publisher, meaning I have time. I'm confident that at some point, there will be an end to the rabbit holes. Then, it will be time to move on.
Speaking of which...
I'm always looking for new music. Most of the time, I'm not finding anything. I get the occasional recommendation from people who know me. But mostly, I poke around, reading reviews on Pitchfork, say, or wherever something interesting pops up. The other day, there was an article in the Japan Times about five interesting new releases. For each piece of music, there were a brief description and a video. I looked at the videos first and then read the text.
Four out of the five releases weren't very interesting to me. But there was one that was incredible -- you can see the video above. I had known that hip hop is big in Japan, but I had no idea what it sounded like. I don't really listen to hip hop; it's usually not my thing. But this stuff sounded so weird and amazing. It was a bit of a production to track down the actual album, but I managed to find it. It's not even only hip hop. It's all over the place, in a very inventive way. Here it is, if you're interested: S.L.N.M
Somehow, this reminded me of Funkstörung, an electronic-music duo that I was really into roughly 20 years ago. At some stage (1998), they remixed one of Björk's tracks, which gives you a pretty good idea of their music. What's interesting to me is how this music doesn't sound old, does it? It's so strange because even though listening to this reminds me of a different time, there's no nostalgia: it still sounds so contemporary.
Speaking of which...
These past weeks, I've spent a lot of time on the articles for my Patreon. It has been very rewarding to write the pieces, even as they each take up quite a bit of my time. I'm currently working on a piece about Michael Schmidt's Ein-Heit, which has served as one of the inspirations for my own book, Vaterland. I've always thought that there was the need for an in-depth book about Ein-Heit itself. Even to compile all the visual references in the book would be quite the task. Maybe this is for when I'm done with that other book I'm working on (but with Ein-Heit out of print, what's the point of such a book when only a few people can see the original?).
Speaking of which...
I thought that I should have a visual header for this Mailing List. But I haven't been able to come up with anything, yet. At some stage, I'm going to have something...
As always thank you for reading!
-- Jörg