No. 96 New Course + A Movie to Induce Crying
No. 96 • 2/2/2024
Registration for "Writing with a Zettelkasten" Cohort 5 is now OPEN
Registration for cohort 5 of my 4-week course (eight sessions), "Writing with a Zettelkasten" has just gone live. First class begins Tuesday, Feb 27. I would LOVE to see you there.
What it is:
"Writing With a Zettelkasten is a 4-week course on how to build out, implement, and use a Luhmann-style zettelkasten for writing. There will be two sessions per week: one 2-hour didactic session (lecture with Q&A) and one 1.25-hour “Q&A” session where students can ask questions, get feedback, and problem-solve."
What we'll cover:
- Week 1: Capturing what catches your attention (fleeting / reference)
- Week 2: Turning incomplete thoughts into useful main notes (all thing main notes)
- Week 3: Connecting ideas and navigating the slip box (links + structure and hub notes)
- Week 4: Sourcing ideas from your zettelkasten for writing (how to organize thoughts for export)
This will be the fifth time I've taught this course (each time updated with new information), and really love it. The students are awesome. There's lots of time to speak one-on-one with students in the sessions. All the "hot topics" and perpetual confusions get covered and sussed out. People get a lot out of it.
For more info and to register [CLICK HERE]
Writing and Interviews
Since we last spoke (before last week when we really last spoke), I've been interviewed a handful of times on the spirit, personal knowledge management, and spirit and personal knowledge management. Here are a few of these interviews:
I've also written a bunch of pieces online. Here are a some of those pieces:
- What Do We Mean When We Say "Bottom-Up?"
- Inspired Destruction: How a Zettelkasten Explodes Thoughts (So You Can Have New Ones)
- Doing What Matters Most: Personal Project Management for the Burgeoning Homesteader
- Keeping the Zettelkasten in Mind When Creating New Notes
- Using Diaries and Journals as Source Material for Zettelkasten Notes
- How to Handle Facts in Your Zettelkasten
- There is No "One True Meaning" in a Text: Reading as a Communal Act
- How to Use Folgezettel in Your Zettelkasten: Everything You Need to Know to Get Started
A Movie to Induce Crying
Over the years, I have found a few movies that have been reliable sources for tears. When I was a kid, it was Mask (the one with Cher and Eric Stoltz, not Jim Carey). As I got older, it became Fierce Grace, a biopic on Ram Dass. Judging by my response to the trailer of Tuesday, starring the brilliant Julia Louis-Dreyfus, I'm guessing this will be a welcome addition:
Note: I will watch movies with the expressed purpose of inducing tears. Sometimes you just need to clear out the emotional, spiritual, and biological ducts.
The Mind Is Not the Brain
Revisited this quote:
"Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads—the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us—drawing them into our own mental processes." — The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul
Considering the many ways we gain insight and make sense of the world beyond our brain, I'm reminded of how limited is the concept of the "second brain" with its reliance on digital apps and platforms and the "offloading" of certain cognitive functions to external "devices" and paper-based media. A second brain can certainly be useful. Especially in a world gone psychotic with information. But, it pales in comparison to what can be experienced and accomplished when we engage our senses, our perceptions, our human, animal, floral, spatial environment.
Note: There should be more discourse concerning whole-body, non-ordinary states and psychic experiences in personal knowledge management.
Justin Adams Engaging with All the Above
You asked for it (you didn't), so now you're getting it. An entire short film devoted to Justin Adams surfing and people watching.
True Detective: Season 4 (conflicted)
God, I so want to love season 4 of True Detective. But, wow, how hard it is to do. Trying to unpack four hundred years of Western colonialism and US racism in each and every episode is just...never a good move. And yet, systemic racism shows up in every solitary facet of our lives. So, in a way, "True Detective: Season 4" is a perfect representation of what's going on in the world: suffocation. Systemic racism suffocates society, which is how I feel watching the show—suffocated by Issa Lopez's heroic, overly on-the-nose efforts. Given the past, present, and probable future, this is not-not-not a bad thing.
Note: Television shows and feature films should stop trying to represent subcultures and left-leaning political activism. In "True Detective," they didn't even bother to sync up people's mouths with the chants.
From the Zettelkasten: "The spirit is affected by the heart"
The condition of the heart—the feedback loop caused by what we've been giving our attention to—affects the quality of our spirit.
"A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit." — Proverbs 15:13
Note: The heart is a vessel to be periodically drained. Book on the subject due out in 2048.
Bonus Poné
Four-dimensional ambient drone-vibes.
And, that's that! See ya next week.
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