Missiverna - "Jag kan föreställa mig ett parallellt universum där broderi är högteknologi och datorer ett hantverk"
Några saker har fastnat under veckan. Mycket av det från andra nyhetsbrev. Jag prenumererar på alldeles för många av dem men jag uppskattar mer och mer att dem dimper ner i inboxen och jag kan läsa, skumma och/eller kasta allt eftersom. Här är några höjdpunkter:
Från Scope of Work (tidigare The Prepared):
I’ve always been fascinated with the co-evolution of computation and textiles. Some of the first industrialized machines produced elaborate textiles on a mass scale, the most famous example of which is the jacquard loom. It used punch cards to create complex designs programmatically, similar to the computer punch cards that were used until the 1970s. But craft work and computation have many parallel processes. The process of pulling wires is similar to the way yarn is made, and silkscreening is common in both fabric and printed circuit board production. Another of my favorite examples is rubylith, a light-blocking film used to prepare silkscreens for fabric printing and to imprint designs on integrated circuits. [...]
Given the shared history, I can imagine a parallel universe where embroidery is considered high-tech and computers a crafty hobby.
Ted Gioia: "Our culture is one of abundance and instantaneous gratification."
Jag gillar verkligen det här missivet av Justin E. H. Smith - The Transmutean Hypotheses - där han lyckas knyta band mellan Gustave Flauberts Salammbô, G. W. Leibniz, Henry James The Bostonians, tunisisk artighet och effektiv altrusim, bland annat. Här ett stycke jag markerade:
Lexikopoleio is a bookstore in the Athens micro-neighborhood of Vatrachonisi, or “Frog Island”, so called because it was built up, if I understood the seller’s story correctly, on unusually swampy land of the sort that tadpoles and what comes from them are known to love. The Modern Greek word for “frog” was one I already knew both from the French batraciens, a somewhat outdated term for amphibians, as well as from Βάτραχοι, the Aristophanes play, which features an instance of onomatopoeic croaking (Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ) of just the sort Leibniz will one day propose as the origin of all language.
Hur Garth Greenwell skriver ihop Mia Hansen-Løves film En vacker dag och en konsert som dirigerades av Herbert Blomstedt är också värt att uppmärksamma - Youth & Age:
He shuffled onstage, gripping the concertmaster’s arm; he needed help to mount the podium, where he sat on a piano bench. And then, microphone in hand, he gave the most energetic and the most winning pre-concert talk I’ve ever heard. For about ten minutes—almost as long as the piece itself—he introduced Ingvar Lidholm’s Poesis, a piece I had never heard of. He was incredibly charming, talking about its “terrible emotional broth,” asking how music can be music without melody or harmony, more or less talking through the development of the whole piece. He was marvelously unvain and very funny, singing out each of the solos tossed around the ensemble, making a kind of tender antagonist of the principal bassist, giving a map of what was to come. It created a space of generosity for the music’s reception; how could we not love it when Blomstedt loves it so much? It was the best advocacy for a difficult piece of new music I’ve ever heard.
Errol Morris skrev 2011 om den där gången han bråkade med Thomas S. Kuhn:
The conversation took a turn for the ugly. Were my problems with him, or were they with his philosophy?
I asked him, “If paradigms are really incommensurable, how is history of science possible? Wouldn’t we be merely interpreting the past in the light of the present? Wouldn’t the past be inaccessible to us? Wouldn’t it be ‘incommensurable?’ ”
He started moaning. He put his head in his hands and was muttering, “He’s trying to kill me. He’s trying to kill me.”
And then I added, “…except for someone who imagines himself to be God.”
It was at this point that Kuhn threw the ashtray at me.
And missed.
(Jag hittade den här anekdoten i en artikel om en utgåva av tidigare outgivna texter av Thomas S. Kuhn, bland annat ett ofullbordat manuskript av en uppföljare till hans The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Av någon anledning kom jag att tänka på den där anekdoten om när Ludwig Wittgenstein hotfullt svängde en eldgaffel runt Karl Popper under en debatt (som blev en bok: Wittgenstein's Poker)).
Så här beskriver beskriver Julia Cameron skrivpraktiken "Morning Pages" i sin bok The Artist's Way:
What are morning pages? Put simply, the morning pages are three pages of longhand writing, strictly stream-of-consciousness: "Oh, god, another morning. I have NOTHING to say. I need to wash the curtains. Did I get my laundry yesterday? Blah, blah, blah..." They might also, more ingloriously, be called brain drain, since that is one of their main functions.
Russell Davies berättar om det:
One of the things you learn is that there’s no such thing as ‘having nothing to write’. Some mornings, many mornings, you’re just forcing yourself through the slog of writing. You’re just sitting there describing the sound of a mostly empty house or noting how your elbow has a small ache. And the sheer act of thinking and writing tips you into a felicitous phrase or an observation. It’s like your unconscious is an old storage unit you’ve been forced to explore and you come across something interesting. Or at least something you’ve forgotten about.
För att knyta ihop med tidigare utskick så läste jag det här i recensionen av en bok om Jacob Burckhardts klassiska verk Die Kultur der Renaissance in Italien från 1860:
(Boken som recenserades var A Renaissance Reclaimed: Jacob Burckhardt’s Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy reconsidered)
Andra saker jag har relaterat till under veckan:
🥗 Yotam Ottolenghis recept på palsternacka och päron i ugn med en krassepesto ovanpå (och lite endive-sallad) var ljuvligt bitter (och lite söt pga lönnsirap med) och José Pizzaros soppa med jordärtskockor, vitlök, mandel och svamp var definitionen av fyllig.
📻 Lättare att hitta avsnitt av radio-/poddprogrammet In Our Time med Braggoscope. Matt Webb berättar om hur han gick till väga för att skapa det.
Några böcker som har noterats under veckan:
The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (via: Robin Sloan)
The House of Fragile Things - Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France av James McAuley (2021)
When I Was a Photographer av Félix Nadar (på engelska 2016)
The First Scientist: Anaximander and his Legacy (2011) och Anaximander And the Nature of Science (2023) av Carlo Rovelli
How to Write a Sentence av Stanley Fish (2011)
The Writing Life av Annie Dillard (1989)
My Phantoms av Gwendoline Riley (2021)
How Far the Light Reaches av Sabrina Imbler (2022)
The Preparation of the Novel av Roland Barthes (föreläsningar från 1978-1980, utgivna på engelska 2010)
Mina Loy: Apology of Genius av Mary Ann Caws (2022)
Tyvärr hittar jag inte vem konstnären är som målat bilden högst upp (det var en lös .jpg jag hittade på datorn), men lovar att uppdatera om jag finner.
Uppdatering: Konstnären heter George Kearey!