Passing Tales: Recent Episodes
R.C. Waldun
n one of Plato’s dialogues: Phaedrus, the Greek philosopher Socrates told the myth of King Thamus. The story goes: once, the Egyptian god Theuth paid a visit to King Thamus and offered him the gift of writing. With great enthusiasm, the god claimed that this tool of writing “will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory” and act as “a potion for memory and for wisdom.” The great King Thamus scratched his beard for a while and shook his head. When Theuth asked him why he’d refuse such a remarkable gift, the King explained that writing is actually not making people wiser. “In fact,” the King went on, “it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learns it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing (Plato 227a — 279c)”.
This dislike, or rather, the paranoia for writing didn’t just bother King Thamus. It essentially haunted Western philosophy for thousands of years. Aristotle later called writing defective, and treated it as mere “symbols of spoken words (Aristotle I.I6a:3)”. French Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau went as far as to call it “a dangerous supplement” in his Confessions.
The key problem, according to Peter Salmon, is that writing without its ‘father’ cannot defend itself. In that sense, the speaker guarantees meaning by his or her presence (Salmon 132). So, if I want my sister to pick something up from the shops for me, it’s better to call her than to write a list. If I want to confront someone, it’s better to meet up with him in person than to argue over text. However, this endless privileging of “speech” over “writing” is not without its dangers.
efore I learned how to use a computer, the only way to research something was to ask my mom for her library card. But now when I want to look something up, my impulse is to read a short blog post or watch a YouTube video on the subject. The key difference here is the format of the information. In a library, all I had were encyclopedias and dense paragraphs. With the internet, however, it’s possible to kick back and watch someone on YouTube explain a topic to me.
Initially, it sounds somewhat favorable. We no longer need to spend hours at a library just to find out about something. But if we step back to think for a second, we’d soon realize that content from the internet functions a lot more like “speech” than “writing”. Videos and podcasts rely predominantly on a speaker to deliver content, and in the written domain, blogposts/newsletters/Tweets also assume a ‘conversational tone’ to keep your interest.
It seems to be the case that even after thousands of years of philosophy, we’re still privileging “speech” over “writing”. It’s not enough just to read a book, we have to listen to our favorite influencers’ rants/reviews of the book. It’s not just enough to read an encyclopedic entry on a subject, we have to listen to a lecture on YouTube to make sure that we’ve got it. Speech, then again, assumes more truth value than writing.
o understand the dangers of this privileging, allow me to bring back a point that I’ve made in my article: The Dangers of Romanticizing the Liberal Arts. There, I discussed a gradual shift of focus from content to personality. Aesthetic values and the charms of the presenter, in this case, overshadowed critical assessments of arguments. When we say that we want to “watch a YouTube video on a subject”, what we’re really saying is: “I want my favorite influencer to tell me what to think”. Personalities had short-circuited our ability to engage critically with information, and all we’re looking for are clear-cut answers for subjects that are supposed to be confusing.
Influencers, at the end of the day, are not necessarily experts on the subjects they preach. My own content on my YouTube channel and Medium are only my own educated guesses and speculations. And when the bulk of our informational diet is fed to us by popular blogposts, viral YouTube videos, and Instagram reels, we no longer have space in our heads to assess what we’ve read or heard. Entertainment, had in a sense, masqueraded itself as truth.
n the summer of 1965, French philosopher Jacques Derrida was on a Vaporetto with his family to Venice when a strange insight hit him. He turned to his wife Marguerite and said: “I think that something has just happened…” Shortly after the trip, the strange insight consumed Derrida completely, and what came out the other end of his pen was a gloriously bonkers book (Salmon 127): Of Grammatology. The book is not at all an easy read. Among many discussions on linguistics, the Chinese alphabet, Phenomenology, and even (I kid you not) masturbation, Derrida actively challenged the privileging of “speech” over “writing” with the concept: différance.
To explain différance in a short article is impossible, and some might argue that to define différance is already violating its integrity. Nevertheless, for the sake of argument, différance is a mode of deference; of putting off the meaning of a statement without defining it. Much of Western philosophy is thoroughly obsessed with finding a clear-cut answer without putting anything off, producing “an absolute science whose conclusions it cannot wait (Derrida 202)”. Therefore, speech is always preferred precisely because it seems to be a clearer way of communicating truth. Yet, over the course of Of Grammatology, Derrida exposed the inherent ambiguities of language and argued that sometimes even “speech” could not communicate truth directly.
A direct consequence of différance is what the Greeks coined as aporia. Merriam-Webster dictionary defined aporia as a logical impasse or a paradox. In our personal lives, aporia happens whenever our worldviews are challenged, or whenever we’re left in a situation that we don’t know how to deal with yet. In the context of learning, aporia typically happens when a new piece of information contradicts what we already know. The grounds of our understanding are disturbed, leaving us desperate to find a solid solution to our confusion.
This is the moment when most of us will run off onto the internet to find a solid explanation. We end up scrolling through Instagram and YouTube just to restore a sense of certainty, without realizing that true learning usually involves embracing this confusion willingly.
In my article Why Children are Better Philosophers, I argued that children are much better at dealing with confusion because the need for certainty isn’t that strong. For grown-ups, however, we need to exert extra effort to accept life as a stream of uncertain events, hearsays, accidents, and frustrating inconsistencies. Contrary to popular belief, humans are not at all reasonable nor rational on a daily basis. Hence, to insist that clear-cut explanations exist in our lives is like sticking our heads in the sand like an ostrich. And when applied to reading, to expect valuable reading material to not cause any confusion is like walking down the isle of knowledge with blinders on.
he paradox of confusion is that once we enter a state of not-knowing, that’s actually when we’re the most open-minded. Always trying to be certain is like pinning down a butterfly as a taxidermist. While what we have in the frame is stable, we can no longer see the movement of the wings, the breeding cycles, or the behavior of the butterfly in its natural habitat. Likewise, if we always try to reduce learning to clear-cut answers, we’re missing out on the joy of embracing ambiguities and deeper insights.
If we truly embrace confusion, then we’d be immune to the effects of mindless information on the internet. We’re able to suspend information and critically assess them before adopting them as our own. In that sense, our reason is grounded and not easily moved by non-sense. And from that place, we can still enjoy content from our favorite creators, yet we’re able to take a deeper pleasure in shades of thoughts that are a great deal subtler, reaching new insights that will allow us to live intelligently.
Notes/further readings:
Aristotle, De Interpretatione.
Derrida, Jacques. L’Écriture et la différence. Routledge Classics, 2001.
Plato, The Collected Dialogues, Princeton University Press, 1961
Salmon, Peter. An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida. Verso, 2021.
Originally published in The Collector on the 11th of July, 2022.
he year was 2002, and the term ‘deconstruction’ had swept through the intellectual scene both in Europe and the United States. After notable publications such as de la Grammatologie and L’écriture et la différence, Derrida’s name became synonymous with the avant-garde intellectual who undermined the Western intellectual tradition. But Derrida himself regarded popular representations of ‘deconstruction’ with mixed feelings. He thought that the public conception of his philosophy was a blatant misreading.
During an interview in 2002, an American journalist asked the French philosopher whether ‘deconstruction’ was parallel to the sitcom Seinfeld in its ironic and fractured ways of storytelling, but Derrida replied: “deconstruction, as I understand it doesn’t produce any sitcom,” he said, “and if people who watch [Seinfeld] think deconstruction is this, the only advice I have to give them is just stop watching sitcom, do your homework, and read.”
The struggles of presenting academic knowledge to the general public aren’t just limited to ‘deconstruction’, but Derrida’s example can be used as a gateway for us to discuss a bigger problem. Namely, the gap between the reality of studying the liberal arts, and the idea of studying the liberal arts portrayed in social media and popular fiction.
I’ve adopted a habit of visiting a bookstore in Carlton after my university classes, and it’s common to run into students clutching copies of The Secret History or If We Were Villains under their arms as they made their way to the register. And after a brief survey on social media sites like Instagram, YouTube, and Tumbler, buzzwords such as Dark Academia and The Modern Romantic are ubiquitous alongside carefully curated feeds that highlight the aesthetics of academic pursuits. However, this collection of aesthetics and representation, while romantic and moving, is not the reality of studying the liberal arts.
I once had a conversation with a first-year literature student when I was on a study break. After a few sips of coffee, she shook her head and told me: “I think I’m ready to drop out.” My eyes widened and I asked her why. She explained to me that University might not be the best way to get into literature because all the classes were putting her to sleep. I nodded and withheld my judgments, and that’s when I realized the problem of romanticizing an academic discipline.
The problem, as I see it, is the gap between expectations and reality. As a fourth-year student in French literature, I realized that though I’ve spent countless hours in the library laboring over the classics, the truth is that I still know virtually nothing about my discipline. And the journey of engaging with the liberal arts was not a smooth sail of a romantic yearning for old books, but it was ridden with hours of laborious research, citations, and presentations I’d rather not bother with.
British linguist and philosopher P. F. Strawson in his essay: Why Philosophy? elaborated his view on the importance of the liberal arts, in which he wrote:
“the reasonably diligent study of [the liberal arts] over a period of years, under the guidance of an experienced tutor, will develop in you a critical and skeptical habit of mind which will be of service to you in assessing whatever you hear or read.”
Engaging with the discipline, in a way, isn’t necessarily about the content that might at times make you want to punch the wall. But through a rigorous process of enduring the struggles of intellectual uncertainty, precisions of citations, and laborious research, the liberal arts serve the function of exercising our minds and teaching us how to think about the world.
Hence, when the aspects of rigor, discipline, and boredom are carefully tucked away from Instagram feeds & novels, it might rudely awaken the naïve student and drain their desire to engage with the discipline. In other words, if we’re too caught up in the aesthetics of the liberal arts, we run the risk of losing motivation before we could reap the true benefits of literature, history, and philosophy.
Besides writing novels, the French writer Gustav Flaubert had another hobby. Over the course of his life, he collected many entries from newspapers and compiled what he called: une encyclopédie de la bêtise humaine (an encyclopedia of human stupidity). These entries were published under the title: Dictionary of Received Ideas posthumously, and they exposed the consequences of popularized ideas running amok. Through this popularization, commented Allain de Botton:
“the modern idiot could routinely know what only geniuses had known in the past, and yet he still was an idiot.”
Uncontrolled popularization had in a sense, “armed stupidity and given authority to fools.”
After a class one day, I asked Derrida’s biographer Peter Salmon (who was teaching the class) how to engage with Derrida’s writing without losing my mind. He advised me to engage directly with the original texts, however difficult it might be. “There’s be a lot of rubbish secondary commentaries, especially from the critics of Derrida who have never bothered to actually read him.” He said before dismissing the class.
What’s interesting here is that though one could misread a book, the misreading still has a chance to be regarded as truth, especially with the aid of social media. Opinions, especially if they’re popular enough, could be neatly adopted as truth. And content that deals with liberal arts around the internet (including my own), however dazzling in their appearance, is still but a collection of hearsay and cannot be regarded with any academic value. The key issue here is a shift from content to personality. The truth here is no longer based on expertise or hours of deep research, but based on the aesthetic values and the charms of the presenter. And if we are not careful, it’s easy to adopt mere ‘opinions’ as ‘facts’, and from that place, our understanding of the liberal arts is obscured if we base our understanding on the content we’ve found on the internet.
This is why I think, though information has been democratized, expertise in the liberal arts should still be valued. It’s way too easy to adopt ‘received ideas’, not at all realizing that they’re just the tip of the ice burg. Likewise, it’s way too easy to adopt quotations from a novel from Instagram and claim that we’ve read the entire book. If we want to distinguish opinions from hearsay, we need to learn how to synthesize multiple perspectives from various accredited sources. But if we are first seduced by the personality of the presenter or the aesthetics of a feed, our understanding will forever be limited.
While I’m making an argument for expertise, I’m not saying that internet content on the liberal arts is entirely sinister or useless. There’s no need for us to stop watching influencers while they offer their opinions, but it is important to make a distinction between entertainment and an academic discipline.
The danger lies in blurring this distinction. Success on the internet is based on an entirely different metric, where academic integrity doesn’t necessarily result in popular content. Therefore, if we truly care about studying the liberal arts, we need to view representations as mere entertainment and opinions without holding them too tightly. All of the content I’ve produced should only be regarded as useful considerations without too much weight. They are tools of seduction to pique your interest before you submit to the real work of wrestling with the meat of the discipline.
The real work in this case is rarely glamorous. It involves being alone in the library for hours on end while clenching your teeth at impenetrable texts. It involves dealing with confusion and coming to terms with not knowing, and it involves painstakingly tracking down citations after finishing a paper. But at the end of a long session of studying, you’d realize that reality will never be the same. You’ll learn to distinguish non-sense from principles, and you’ll also come to terms with Derrida’s advice. To truly gain value from the liberal arts, at times we need to return to the basics:
“Do your homework, and read.”
Originally published in The Collector on the 28th of June, 2022.
In September of 1914, the 25-year-old Ludwig Wittgenstein entered a bookshop in Turnov during his active duty in WWI and found only one book there. The book was Tolstoy’s Gospels in Brief. He bought it, read it, and re-read it during the war and the dreadful period of his imprisonment in Italy. He noted in his war journal: “I always carry [it] around with me like a talisman.”
This talisman, according to Wittgenstein, had kept him alive during the war. But more than merely keeping him alive, The Gospels directly influenced the philosopher’s masterpiece: Tractatus-Logico Philosophicus. What we now owe to Wittgenstein’s philosophy, we also owe to a dog-eared and beaten down copy of one of Tolstoy’s lesser-known works, found in a dusty bookshop in Turnov.
In my essay: A Piece of Advice I Despised, I wrote about my experience of discovering Wittgenstein’s work in a similar way. I wandered around the campus bookshop and accidentally found a copy of his Philosophical Investigations and bought it. Though I didn’t understand much of it at the age of 17, it always brought about a kind of comfort whenever I returned to it.
Four years later, I found myself wandering through a bookshop a few streets down from campus. I was stressed out about a French in-class dissertation, so I took a break and browsed around the philosophy section. Once again, I found myself drawn to Wittgenstein, and this time I found a collection that combined his major works. I bought it and caressed the cover.
To say that I found it comforting is an understatement. The book reminded me of why I got into philosophy in the first place, and I was glad to start re-reading an author I had once obsessed over. After years of learning, and now coming up to the tail end of my bachelor’s degree, I always found myself returning to just a few books by a few authors. They felt like anchors against an overwhelming sea of choice, and I owe so much to only a handful of writers and my dog-eared copies of their works.
I looked back at the shelves of the bookstore and realized that I no longer have to worry about reading all of them. Just before I was about to head out, the sight of a boy halted my steps. He was gripping onto a copy of Jules Verne’s Around The World In 80 Days, and his mother was at the register with her wallet in her hand. I looked at the boy and thought: please let the book stay with him. In ten years, I wish to see him accidentally pull the same book out from the bottom of a dusty shelf, and bask in the pleasant surprise of re-visiting a familiar voice. I looked down and opened up the book I bought to the first page, and I was right back to where I started:
“The world is everything that is the case.
The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
The world is determined by the facts, and… being …
For the totality…”
Think back to the first time you fell in love. It seemed silly just because you were too young to understand it. Whatever the reaction was, realize that at that moment, it was true. They might not last, but in retrospect, they were not superfluous or worthless.
To think that temporary things carry no value is to think like a jealous new lover, who cannot bear the fact that their beloved had once loved someone else so entirely, that they want to erase the past altogether. Nevertheless, the past is still there and alive. It will slip out during a drunken night or in the company of an understanding friend. What we have to realize is that scholars too, are still humans, and humans are victims of all kinds of vanities and flaws.
Hence, we’re faced with a tricky problem when we want to find out the origins of our love story with scholarship. Theories and concepts when they’re laid out in axioms and beautiful arguments look like they’re so far from petty concerns, that sometimes we find it hard to admit to ourselves that the original motivation for pursuing ideas might’ve stemmed from a place that’s a little sinister.
Maybe it wasn’t the desire for truth that nudged the young man onto the path of studying philosophy, or maybe it wasn’t the love of beauty that inspired the undergraduate to pursue her dream of studying art history. It might as well be the case that the philosophy student sought a kind of control and comfort in philosophy because, at some point, the chaos of the world was a little too painful to bear. Maybe the young girl was humiliated and displaced when she was in high school, and now she must find a way to distinguish herself from what she studies. The origin story is not usually clean and noble, and it’s much better to admit that than to hide it from ourselves.
Just like our first episode of love. Despite the fact that we were young and didn’t know any better, we still arrived here now in one piece, alive and better off. Those brief episodes of passion weren’t useless or unjustified, but they’re merely rites of passage to truly teach us the value of a more mature kind of love.
The same goes for being a scholar. Whatever got us into it in the first place could seem quite silly in retrospect, yet when the rubber meets the road, the path of learning would humble the student, and purge most of the silly ideas from their mind. Hence, there’s no point in denying the original inkling and calling it silly. We still decided to show up to class at the end of the day. From that end, all is true. Noble or crass, superficial or profound. The point of entry cares not about where you were before you embarked upon this journey, it only cares that you stay on it and absorb all the pending lessons.
Philosophy had always fascinated me, but after years of wrestling with questions about the purpose of education and philosophy, I still don’t have a perfect understanding of the picture, but I’d like to present a few sketches of some of my thoughts on this topic.
A Pleasant Suprise
I remembered having a conversation with a student in my philosophy class, which clarified my thoughts on this topic. Studying philosophy this semester came to me as a pure surprise. I enrolled in a class called: The Philosophy of Language at the last minute because I couldn’t get into any other courses due to an enrolment error. At first, I was a touch bit skeptical, because I wasn’t particularly fond of the tedium of the subject. But after the first seminar, I found myself magnetically drawn to the discussion of the class. This is where I found myself sitting next to the person who supplied the insight for this essay.
Correcting My Prejudices
After class one day, we went to a café and started discussing the works of Hegel and how tedious it was to read him. She said that in her other philosophy class that dealt with phenomenology, the professor had vehemently denounced Hegel and Heidegger as “terrible writers.” When I asked her what she thought was the point of philosophy, she responded by pointing out that we were having a philosophical discussion, and that in its essence, however pedestrian and commonplace, is the act of doing philosophy.
I looked around the café and it all became clear to me why I was so drawn to the discussions in class. When I first started reading philosophy, I had the erroneous idea that I needed to treat the ideas presented by those thinkers I’ve admired as gospel. And the process of studying their books must be conducted in isolation, like a medieval scholar, scrupulously laboring through ancient passages with great precision and rigor. This is why I left philosophy for a few years to pursue literature because to me at the time, storytelling and poetry seemed to have advanced beyond excessive intellectual showmanship, where their principal concern is to communicate human experiences in the most honest way possible. I held my prejudices for a few long years, and whenever someone gets overly philosophical during a discussion, my brain would turn off and refuse to engage in the conversation.
But I recently realized that it wasn’t the flaw of philosophy that had repulsed me from reading dense and heavy books, but my prejudiced attitude and conception of philosophy. What I realized after engaging in those seminars was that in the process of articulating insights verbally in a group of similar-minded students, my ideas were refined, and my prejudices were counter-acted by disagreements. It reached a point where I could no longer hold any of my ideas sacred; something that’s extremely difficult to do when we conduct philosophy in isolation. Rather, I opened myself up to alternative views and paradigms that were quite different from mine.
Philosophy as An Exchange
The conclusion I’ve reached here is that philosophy is essentially useless without an open dialogue and that the form itself is an exchange, and it’s not an isolated, scientific pursuit. This is the reason why most if not all philosophical treatises are either responses or criticisms of theories that had come before them. If one wishes to devise a universal principle for the human condition, it helps to test his ideas against the real world, and this act of testing is the act of discussion. This is why Kant had entrusted his early chapters of Critique of Pure Reason to his best friend Joseph Green, and why Sartre had also found great value when he shared his works in progress with Simone De Beauvoir.
A philosopher must not play the role of God and impose his theories and concepts upon the real world, and the act of attempting to do so will give rise to bad theories ridden with ideologies and blind spots. And even more importantly, a student of philosophy should not treat philosophical texts as a replacement for sacred texts studied in isolation. They must dip in and out of the two realms of reading and exchange to make sure their understanding is not subjected to biases. This, in summary, is my view of philosophy so far, and this view allowed me to re-engage with the world of ideas with measured humility.
My taste in reading ranges widely, and it’s difficult sometimes to fulfill all of my interests. I love philosophy as much as I love French literature. And if I pile readings for my degree on top of it, it gets irritating because I can’t read everything I want all at once.
That’s why I’ve rejected the idea of reading one book at a time, and favored consistency over pages read every day. Now I like to read a consistent amount from three different books out of three different blocks of my day.
Mornings: Philosophy
Philosophy books are usually quite dense, that’s why I like to wake up early and read 20 pages before getting my day started. This alleviates the anxiety of not reading enough philosophy during my day.
Train rides: French novels
As a part of my degree, I have to read Madame Bovary and L’étranger in the original French. My train ride to university lasts for about an hour, and it’s usually a great pastime to read in another language for a short window of my day.
Evenings: Literature
This is the block where I tackle my class readings, and now the unit’s going through a broad survey of Gothic Literature. It’s a great way to wind down since the material is not too difficult to enjoy before going to bed.
When I read in this way, I’m never bored with my reading, and it also allows me to connect ideas from three different spheres of reading. It’s great for writing essays and the act of reading no longer fills me with dread.
One of the meanest lessons I had to learn was that thinking about the future makes 0 difference.
If you think too much about it, you’d go nuts and get angry at anything that doesn’t go your way. If you think too little about it other people would make you feel bad about being lazy.
The philosophy I’ve adopted is to treat the future as pure fantasy because that’s what it actually is. This fantasy is full of my ridiculous ideas yet it is mine and mine alone.
I don’t bother to shove it onto the world or down people’s throats. But what’s stranger is that once I’m bored and am no longer hot and bothered about the fantasy, I’d find myself living out those ridiculous ideas without even thinking about them.
When I was younger I really wanted to be a piano teacher. I was really hot and bothered about it and got angry whenever dad interrupted my practice. Now over a decade later, I still play for fun, but today my neighbor heard me play and hired me on the spot as their son’s piano teacher.
“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.”
-Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
There’s no ‘how’ to the process of making friends. It just happens. The more you look for a ‘how’ the fewer friends you’d have. However, here is:
The No-Malarkey Guide To Friendships
1: Seeking people who are ‘like-minded’ is a recipe for turning into a bore prone to recycling the same topics/opinions. Consider talking to a mirror or adopt the term: ‘like-tempered’.
2: Do not consider a friendship when you are drunk/high. You’ll likely forget about them the next morning. On the off chance that you do remember them, the friendship would be based on the stupidest parts of you and the other person.
3: The more you want to befriend someone, the less likely you’d see that person again.
4: Attachments to childhood friends are justified if you believe that you’re still a child.
5: The more of a loner you are, the more people want to get into your space and hang around you. One day you’ll wake up and wonder: who are all these people in my living room?
6: ‘Friends’ who pissed you off once will likely do it again. No amount of ‘fixing’ will change that.
7: Befriending someone you’ve never met in person is like playing the Russian Roulette.
8: Sometimes friendships just fizzle out. Attempts of ‘re-creating’ what was will drive everyone bats.
9: If all else fails, get a dog.
Ideas always look good in my head, but when I try to write them down, they’re always uglier, like subjects of biopics in real life.
That’s why I started writing on paper.
I liked writing on a computer because everything looked clean. The first draft looked like the real thing.
However, on paper, even the final draft looks like a child’s scrapbook, but this made re-writing very easy, because the flaws are so easy to spot.
Whereas on a computer, finding flaws is like trying to spot a spy from the KGB. Everything’s already set in stone by the backspace key. There’s no room to mess around and let the idea develop.
Hence, though writing on paper is a mess, it’s the right kind of mess.
A few years ago, reading wasn’t something I did. It was who I was. Reader was my identity and it drove me bats and turned reading into a chore.
Now it’s a good pastime. Though I’m not crazy about it anymore, I’m reading more than ever.
Eventually, I got tired of talking about what I’ve read. Asking people what they’ve read is like asking what food they have in their fridge. It’s simply not that interesting.
And just like eating food out of a fridge, when someone’s well-read, it shows. Either through their wits, their ways of thinking, and how they carry themselves. They don’t need to advertise it.
Here’s something from Lagerfeld:
“I have always read a lot and I still read a lot, but I don’t like to flaunt it or talk about it. If people think I’m stupid, superficial, I don’t care.”
On the night of my 21st birthday, I dressed up as Andy Warhol and took my new Polaroid camera to a pub. After a few drinks, I went up to a table crowded with strangers and introduced myself as Andy. The table went berserk and I spent the next five minutes taking everyone’s portraits.
I enjoyed dressing up and messing around, but what I enjoyed more was how happy those people were when they got their Polaroids. This is why I like taking portraits of people. I like giving them a new way of seeing themselves.
At the end of the night, I ended up at my friend (an amazing poet in his own right) Jaidyn’s house. It was 3 a.m. in the morning and we sat on his porch and talked.
“Do you think your art has more to do with other people or yourself?” I asked him.
“I don’t know, sometimes I do it for myself, sometimes I make it for other people, like my street poems.” He said and asked me the same question.
“I’ve always done it for myself, even if it looks like I’m doing it for other people,” I said.
It’s true. Art, in whatever shape or form, is useless unless it touches someone. So, if I’ve created something that doesn’t touch anyone, I’d feel like crap and people won’t care. But If I’ve created something that lands, I’d feel good about making other people feel good and get paid for it.
This is why I don’t like the lonely genius stuff because I’m not close enough to life to create something that’ll land. I like hanging out with all kinds of people and occasionally make time for short bursts of solo work. If I spend too much time alone, I’d get too far up my ass and that’s when I start producing bad stuff.
And when that happens, that’s my cue to call someone to keep me in check.
Our culture is obsessed with labels. Do a quick search on Instagram and you’ll find:
1: 19-year-old life coaches
2: CEOs with websites that lead to 404 pages
3: Artists claiming that their work is too good to display on their feed
4: Writers’ feeds that look like catalogs for commercial stationery stores
In a culture that’s highly visual, we all want to “be”, not to “do”. We want to be the noun, not the verb.
But here are some people who disagree:
“I don’t know what I am. I know that I’m not a category, a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process.”
-R. Buckminster Fuller
“You should always have a product that’s not just ‘you’. An actress should count up her plays and movies and a model should count up her photographs and a writer should count up his words and an artist should count up his pictures so you always know exactly what you’re worth, and you don’t get stuck thinking your product is you and your fame, and your aura.”
-Andy Warhol
For me, I like a bit of both. I’m a very vain person so I like “to be”. I’m also a workaholic so I also like “to do”. But I don’t like labels because, for me, they always seem to change every few months.
So, I prefer to be obsessed with something. With a certain kind of art, an author, a lover, to the point where normal things – going to McDonald’s, getting a coffee alone, or grocery shopping – become extremely difficult.
I used to want to hold on to these obsessions, but now I just want to relax and allow them to come in and get out because I’ve no idea what I’ll be doing or who I’ll be in a few months.
A bad idea usually peters out, but a good idea grows on me like a pet dog. I have to take it to lunch, to a library, to a café, but I’ll never take it to a cinema.
Sometimes it grows on me so much that my life begins to revolve around it. Everything: eating, hanging out, partying, etc. They’re just things I have to get done before I can turn the idea into a video, a blog post, or a snarky auto-reply to e-mails in my spam folder.
But I have to stop myself from executing the idea straight away because just like a pet dog, I need to walk it before it’s halfway tolerable. I need to let a good idea sit for a while before it balloons into something with substance.
This usually looks like:
1: Sitting at a café for an hour before the waiters chase me away
2: Reading the first paragraphs of 10+ books at a bookstore
3: Accidently bumping into someone I know in the streets and end up buying them a coffee
4: Playing the first 4 seconds of Helikopter, Helikopter on repeat in my apartment
Eventually, I’ll feel bloated. I can no longer carry the idea around because it’s too heavy. At that point, I have to let it go and put it out into the world.
But I’ll never let a pet dog go in the same way.
I believe that you can’t just stop giving a damn. Because if you want to stop giving a damn, you still give a damn to start with.
You can tell people you don’t give a damn but if you have to tell people that, you still give a damn.
The only acceptable steps to stop giving a damn are as follows:
1: Give too much damn at some point
2: Corner yourself because you gave too much damn
3: Get angry at people and yourself for giving a damn
4: Realize that anger is stupid because actually, most people don’t give a damn about you giving a damn
5: Come to terms with how useless giving a damn is
6: Stop giving a damn
Note: resist all urges to skip straight to step 6 in this formula. Otherwise, you’ll never stop giving a damn.
Sometimes we pretend to like artists/writers just to sound impressive. But in my experience, no one gives a hang about your taste.
At the end of the day, you should be the only one who gives a hang, since you’re the one consuming their art.
So, here’s a list of people I give a hang about (so far).
Artists/writers I give a hang about & why & recommended readings
1: David Sedaris – picks up trash for 8 hours a day when he’s not writing
R. R.: Me Talk Pretty One Day
2: Fran Lebowitz – makes me feel ok about being an easily irritable person
R. R.: The Fran Lebowitz Reader
3: Truman Capote – accidentally turned an article for The New Yorker into In Cold Blood
R. R.: Early Short Stories or In Cold Blood
4: Andy Warhol – was Truman Capote’s devout stalker before he became cool
R. R.: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
5: Pablo Picasso – was good at painting a lot of paintings
R. R.: Go to an art gallery
6: Chuck Klosterman – journalism I’m actually willing to read
R. R.: Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs
7: Austin Kleon – the whole reason why this scrapbook exists
R. R.: The Steal Like An Artist Trilogy
8: Elton John – I too, felt like a rocket man at some point in my life
R. R.: Search Elton John on Spotify
9: Halston – sold his name and had a cocaine addiction, but a glamorous designer
R. R.: Halston on Netflix
10: Miles Davis – my cure for insomnia and 2am nervous attacks
R. R.: Follow the step attributed to Elton John
11: Duc de La Rouchefoucauld – started Tweeting in the 17th Century
R. R.: The Maxims
To be continued.
Last week I went to a jazz bar with my friend Yuko and she made fun of me at the bar for ordering the same drink (vodka lemonade) every time.
“Don’t you want to try something new? Give him a vodka cranberry.”
In the opening of There’s a Tale to This City, my alter ego Rick Walkow suffered a similar fate, where the barista Lauren made fun of his habit of ordering the same cup of English Breakfast tea around the clock.
“Oh, can’t you just change it up a bit?”
Whenever I went to the French Café down Little Flinders Lane, the waiters no longer bothered to take my order.
“Alors, un latte avec deux sucre? Pas de soucis! (A latte with two sugars? No problem!)
And, when I used to work for a café bookstore, the chef wavered me away when I was on my lunch break:
“No more beef pie for you! My word, you had the same thing every day for two weeks!”
I’m a boring person. I like to pick one item from the menu, one flavor of ice cream (choc-chip mint), or one seat at the café and stick to it until someone chases me away with extraordinary effort.
A part of me yearns for a high-creative lifestyle. Pub crawling, couch surfing, and trying out a different drink every time I end up somewhere new. But after a little taste of it, I had to bow down to my aversion to novelty.
That’s not to say I won’t ever try anything new, it’s just that I believe a creative life is supposed to be boring. If I fall into the rabbit hole of using my art to justify endless novelty, I’d run the risk of busying myself with too much fun, but too little time for creating. Because at the end of the day, creativity is just that: boring work. And to reach that conclusion, we need another comparison.
An artist’s life in movies
1: Drinking near a typewriter
2: Smoking cigarettes with fellow artists on the terrace
3: Stuffing around in an art gallery
4: Clubbing every other day
5: Sleeping in a pile of sketches, writing, and canvases because inspiration might strike at 3 am
An artist’s life as I know it
1: Staring at a blank word document at a café every morning.
2: Ordering a bottle of Coca-Cola feels sinful
3: Unless it’s with a group of visual art students, I wouldn’t go to a gallery alone because I’m out of my depth
4: Sitting at a bar wishing I was home, reading Warhol’s biography
5: Inspiration is a whole bunch of malarkey. Chaining myself to a chair is the best policy
Take these daily scrapbook posts for example. If I was too busy deciding where to write, I’d have less time to think about what to write about. Instead, I found myself at the same seat, at the same café, ordering the same Rueben sandwich for breakfast just to get this post out on time.
Like it or not, all of us are insane. The more I tried to be otherwise, the more I felt like a child playing dress-up. And this insanity usually applies to our daily routines.
Author Austin Kleon wrote in his book Keep Going:
“One’s daily routine is a highly idiosyncratic collection of compromises, neuroses and superstitions.”
I mean, take this list for a spin from the book:
“Kafka scribbled into the night while his family slept.”
“Plath wrote in the morning before her children woke up.”
“Balzac slug 50 cups of coffee a day.”
“Goethe sniffed rotten apples.”
“Steinbeck had to sharpen 12 pencils before starting his work.”
What becomes apparent is that these routines cannot be replicated. Sniffing rotten apples won’t make you the next great German writer, it’ll only make you look like an idiot with a bunch of fruit flies buzzing around your apartment.
But I do think there’s value in reading about these routines because they’re mirrors that reflect your own weird spins on your creative life.
For me, I can safely attribute all of my creative output (scripting videos, writing, digitally yelling at spam via email) to my inability to get into the shower. I don’t hate the act of showering, but in my mind, it always prevented my day from moving on. Without a shower, I can’t
1: Head to bed without guilt
2: Grant myself the liberty to relax on the couch
3: Chat to someone on the phone in peace
4: Head out of the door without looking like I just blew something up in my home lab
So, the task of showering always looks bigger in my head. And the bigger the task is, the more I procrastinate by:
1: Pacing around my apartment while mumbling to myself
2: Re-reading The New Yorker shouts & murmur clippings
3: Cleaning my kitchen for the 5000th time
4: Re-watching every Fran Lebowitz interview on YouTube
Some people tell me to get on with it, but what they don’t understand is that after 30 minutes of pacing around, strange things happen. Sometimes a video idea would spring into my mind. Sometimes I’d remember to call my uncle who still lived with grandma. Sometimes I’d find myself scribbling down the opening to a blog post.
Our culture is at war with procrastination, but I think my pre-shower rumination boosted my creativity because it’s the only gap in my schedule where I’m not thinking about work or reading. I was simply stuffing around, and sometimes stuffing around is the best way to make art.
My friend Matt’s nickname is The Australian Psycho because if I described his morning routine, you’d think I’ve befriended Patrick Bateman. For the sake of record-keeping, it looks something like this:
5.00 a.m. – Rise
5.15-5.45 a.m. – Morning run + workout
6.00-7.15 a.m. – Foreign language learning
7.30-8.00 a.m. – Meditation
8.15-8.35 a.m. – Juicing + vegan breakfast
8.40-8.50 a.m. – Elaborate skincare routine (done with products imported from South Korea)
9.00 a.m. – Head into the lab and yell at first year fellows
In comparison, my default routine was a little more chaotic.
11.00 a.m. – Wake up (while still staying in bed)
11.15 a.m.-12.00 p.m. – Finish the episode of The Good Doctor from the night before
12.00 p.m.-1 p.m. – Wander around the house wishing I had a dog
1.15 p.m. – Head to a café for breakfast and finally get to work
Before meeting Matt, I was content with my way of living. But after buying him a few rounds of coffee, I noted down our differences.
Matt
1: Zen master level calm
2: Runs a 10k race without training
3: Ever-present smile
4: Amazing skin (acquired after applying products imported from South Korea)
Robin
1: Easily irritable
2: The walk to the café felt like a marathon
3: Resting ‘don’t you dare talk to me’ face
4: Haven’t shaved in 3 weeks
We caught up again in mid-January and talked about our daily routines. I told him that on the night before, I found myself on a friend’s couch at 5 am in the morning, unable to sleep because the birds were chirping. He asked if I was happy with this way of life, and I said no because I felt like I was spiraling out of control. Then he asked me why I loathed routines so much, and I said: because I’m an artist. He laughed and almost fell out of his chair, and told me that routines are probably more important for the artistic kind. Because for us, our work has very little structure and certainty to start with. And if we don’t ground ourselves with some order in our lives, we’d spiral into outer space without a return shuttle. Then, he asked me after draining his coffee: when are you planning your trip back down to earth?
The very next day, I made some changes to my schedule and came up with an upgraded routine:
10.30 a.m. – Rise
11.00 a.m.-11.35 a.m. – A gym workout with an audiobook (current read: Steal Like An Artistby Austin Kleon.)
12.00p.m.-12.30 p.m. – Eggs + toast + chicken schnitzel for breakfast
1.00p.m. – Head to a café and start work
So far, I’m no longer easily irritable because I saved $16 every morning by cooking at home.
I stayed in Melbourne during the last month of 2018, though it made more sense to go on that family vacation in Tasmania. I sat at a Starbucks on Swanston Street and journaled in my notebook. Other patrons who passed by my table were mostly couples and families. Almost all of them wrapped themselves in Christmas decors, just like that café register littered with festive promotions.
I didn’t give myself a semester break because the fleeing sense that I was running out of time haunted me. A few months before December, I dropped out of all the pre-requisite classes for a Bachelor of Science and committed, according to my course advisor, academic suicide. She explained in that annoying matter-of-fact voice that if I chose a full-load of courses in the humanities, I would never be eligible for a Bachelor’s Degree in any STEM field, ever. At that point, I was completely done with science so my choice was clear. Then after ruffling through my course application sheets, the advisor drew my attention to a unit I chose:
“Do you know anything about this subject?” She pushed up her glasses.
“It’s a research unit from what I’ve heard,” I said.
She let a sigh and continued: “I’m not going to lie. This unit’s highly selective and at this point, you better have a topic in mind. You only have a year to write up a mini-thesis before your graduation.”
“A thesis?”
“And a final presentation in front of a panel. It’ll be difficult along with your other courses, but the choice is yours.”
Though I exited the advisor’s office with an approved course application sheet, I didn’t have a clue what my topic was. A few weeks later, I went to the induction for the research unit and was convinced that I was out of my depth. One of the candidates, Gary, already planned to research mangroves with established academics at Monash University. Another candidate, Zahra, had already received multiple awards for her work in genetic engineering.
“What’s your topic then, Robin?” The facilitator, Dr. M. asked.
After a minute of silence, I said that I wanted to do something with philosophy. In a cohort full of aspiring scientists, I stuck out like a sore thumb. Dr. M. gave a disinterested nod and said: “Well, there’s only one person you could speak to if that’s the case.”
That person he referred to was Ms. C. who was the only history teacher in the entire school. She managed to keep a small unit running despite a huge budget cut, and naturally, I enrolled in her class for my final year. During the unit’s induction, Ms. C. opened up the floor after a brief preview of the course and asked us why we enrolled in the unit. Out of the small crowd, a lot of them said that they enrolled because they enjoyed the unit last year. Then, when she cast the spotlight on me, I froze for a good minute before saying: “I think I’m just interested in how ideas evolved over time.”
The class looked at me in silence. There was a faint smile on Ms. C.’s face, suggesting that I should finish my train of thought. I continued: “I guess I just want to understand why people did what they did.” After those words left my mouth, that same shiver of uncertainty I felt during the research unit induction gripped me again. What I didn’t have, and thought everyone else had was that confident certainty. I felt like all my attempts of understanding anything were fruitless grasps at thin air.
After the induction, everyone packed up their books and shuffled out of the classroom. I gathered my books and just before I was about to leave, Ms. C. stopped me at the door: “That was an interesting answer, Robin,” she said, “and also, a little bird flew over to my desk and told me something about a research unit you’re doing. Are you interested in the history of ideas?”
“Well, maybe,” I settled my books on the table, “blind spots scare me so I think history might point out some of the things I’m not considering.”
The same smile remained on Ms. C.’s face. She pointed at the classroom’s door and said: “Come with me, I have something you might find interesting.”
After a little trip through the corridors, I was at her office. There was a huge desk, a few shelves packed full of reference material and a cup half-filled with cold coffee next to her laptop. After a few minutes of shuffling through the shelves, she pulled out two books: Understanding Deleuze & Madness and Civilization, and handed them to me. “Just some light reading for you over the break.”
Though I knew very little about Deleuze and Foucault, what I received brewed a strange kind of excitement. It started with a faint whisper from those books that might’ve distanced themselves from me due to their obscurity. But after that history class, I finally came to terms with the fact that these books, however difficult, were written by other humans with similar minds. And the act of slowly uncovering what they had to say was completely humane when most of us only care to mull over our own thoughts. I said thank you to Ms. C. and caught a late bus back home with those books in my satchel.
The line at Starbucks cleared up and I read the same page in Madness and Civilization three times. The only thing I managed to scribble down in my notebook was: I think I’ve underestimated the challenge. I felt like Ms. C. had kicked me in the deep end of the pool without a floaty. Certainty was a luxury. When I thought I had something, it would slip through my fingers, and the race to find my research subject, again, felt like grasping at thin air in a dark room. Often, after my reading sessions at the café, I spent hours wandering along Southbank, hoping and waiting for some kind of grand revelation.
Eventually, the semester break was over. During the first class of my research unit, all the students were giddy to talk about what they had learned over the holiday. When it was my turn, all I could offer was a jumbled mess of Foucault’s terminologies which made very little sense. After the class I walked to Ms. C.’s office, holding those two books that had tortured me a good deal. She was pleased to see me and asked how I found the reading. I shook my head and said: “I really don’t think I understood anything.”
“Well, nothing?” she remained seated.
“Maybe ten percent. And I’m not even sure about that ten percent.”
“Your topic’s due in a week,” she got up and flicked those books I left on her table, “and, these books look awfully clean.”
“Clean?”
“Well, a tidy book is always bad news.” She handed them back to me, “don’t bother returning these. So, maybe bring a pencil with you next time.”
The coming months went by in a blur. I re-read and refined my research idea under Ms. C.’s supervision and eventually came up with a vague plan. After that, I could only remember the rest of the year as a series of back-and-forth emails and after-hour visits to her office. Though I had a general direction of where my research was going, I’d be lying if I said I understood those books she gave me. Gradually, the cover of Madness and Civilization became old and crinkly, and plastic index tabs populated the side of Understanding Deleuze. Just like a long and enduring collection of poems, those books changed every time I read them. Though disfigured and dogeared, they always invited me to sit down with them. If I probed deep enough, perhaps, they would let out a few extra nuggets of insights. After a while, I realized that I no longer craved that luxury called certainty. Hence, every slow re-read only made me more patient and deliberate. Before I knew it, the year was approaching an end and I was about to present my research in front of the panel.
After finishing the coursework for my last year of senior high school, I got a job as a bookseller and spent a lot more time with fiction than philosophy. During a quiet break after my morning shift, I received a phone call from Ms. C. and she said she’d like to catch up for coffee that afternoon. I packed up my bag, clocked off, and took a bus to campus. By the time I got to the café next to Campus Centre, Ms. C. had already ordered two cups of Latte.
“I hope you don’t mind cold coffee,” she passed me a cup, “I have some news for you.”
I took the cup and sipped. It was disgusting but it readied me to hear the news.
“They’re giving out subject awards for graduation night, and your research just happened to land you that award,” she looked pleased and leaned back in her seat, “under my supervision of course.”
“You’re not serious.”
“I wouldn’t get you a coffee if I’m not.”
“But I was probably the least prepared out of all of them.” I drank more of that disgusting mess to make sure that I was still grounded in reality.
“You know,” she said, “I used to know a Ph.D. student when I was doing my master’s. Her thesis was on Hamlet and she was good. Knew all her stuff, but you know what ended up happening?”
“No?”
“She didn’t end up graduating first. Later on, my professor told me that, the reason why she didn’t perform was that she knew too much.” Ms. C. settled down her cup, “Now, do you think you understand those two books I gave you?”
I chuckled and said: “No, not really.”
“Then, you’re probably on the right track.” She nodded and got up from her seat, “but still, congratulations.” After a pat on the shoulder, she wandered out of the café, leaving me two cups of cold coffee and a calm afternoon smile.
I took another sip of coffee and settled down my mug. Melbourne just went into its 6th lockdown and two years have passed since I cracked open those books Ms. C. gifted me. Though I had re-read Madness and Civilization a few times, I was still not convinced that I understood it fully. Maybe, the pleasures of intellectual pursuits for me came from reading something again and again while being open to the possibility that I might never get it. Confusion for me, after a while, was an end in itself and I learned to enjoy it alongside those windows of revelations. Because with each nod of clarity, I was more able to remember who I was when I first wandered into Ms. C.’s office: a naïve student who caressed those strange pages for the very first time, confused yet hopeful.
“You know what’s really crazy?” B and I got on the phone after I had read for a few hours. “This bird came into my bookshop once…”
“Mhm.” My eyes wandered around my apartment and I was half engaged with the story. The bird reminded me that I used to breed zebra finches and those little bastards had a bunch of babies before the daddy bird kicked the bucket. So, I ended up with so many birds that my parents eventually sold them all off.
“So, it just flew in one day and was trapped in the display window,” B continued, “There was an empty box in the display window, right? The bird hid under there so it looked like it was crushed. Which it wasn’t.”
“And?” I was tuned in because a bird who pretended to be crushed under a box sounded interesting.
“I had to close the store and called animal service. They wanted me to buy fruit. FRUIT! To lure it out. I tried everything. I tried a broom, tried a thing that played bird noises on my phone, everything… Then I had no choice but to run out and get a mango, only to find that I didn’t have anything to cut it with!”
“Mhm!” At this point, I was excited. What could be better than a case of a trapped bird involving a broom, a mango, and idiots at animal service who conjured up such a ridiculous solution?
“Luckily, my boss had this habit of leaving all his shit around so I found a butter knife under the counter. They had CCTV footage of me cutting up fruit pieces! When that was happening, people lined up at the counter to tell me there was a bird in the window. I was annoyed so I laid out a whole trail of fruit but it didn’t take the bait!”
“And how did it get out in the end?” I leaned closer to the phone.
“It just flew out eventually and my boss was literally downstairs the entire time! I told him: ‘hey, there was a bird in the window and it took me two hours to drive it out!’ and all he cared about was that I did all the shelving on time…”
“It wasn’t like he could do anything about it,” I said, “A bird was trapped in the display window, for word’s sake.”
“I don’t know? At least he could show me that he appreciated all that work I did? And yeah. It was a bird, for word’s sake.” B sighed.
The story started with a crack at the base of my shower. A week later, the crack widened, and paint around it started flaking off. So, on a Friday afternoon, I called 3 plumbing companies. None of them wanted to send anyone out and one of them went as far as trying to sell me a tube of silicon so I could fix it myself.
After all that, I decided to use my last resource: Lisa at the real estate agency. Over the line always sounded like she was on the verge of strangling someone. “It’s four pm can’t you find a better time to call? Matt will come over next week and check it out for you. He’ll give you a call!” She hung up and over the following week, I received a text message from a certain Matt who promised to come and have a look at 9 am on a Thursday.
For the record, I didn’t care for anything that happens before 11 am because sleeping when others were at work felt great. So, upon receiving the news that I had to get up at 9 am, I called my sister Ada:
“Hey, do you want to come by and have lunch together on Thursday?”
“That was out of the blue.” She said.
“Well, let’s just catch up it’s been a while.”
And of course, what I didn’t tell her was that even though she was great company, she was a greater alarm clock. Without fail, my intercom buzzed at 8 am on Thursday and I was forced to get up to buzz her in. I brewed some tea and sat her down before revealing her real purpose for the day. She wasn’t pleased.
“Next time, just ask me to give you a call instead,” she shook her head, “you’re paying for lunch because this is on you.”
We lounged around and waited for Matt to show up and fix the shower problem. But the only problem was that in the imagination of a plumber, 9 am was synonymous with 1 pm. And it was impossible to spend those in-between hours with ease. I couldn’t even go to the toilet without the looming fear of ending up with 40 missed calls on my phone and a grumpy plumber waiting in the lobby. Hence, we sensibly stayed in the apartment after lunch for 3 hours, and around 1 pm, the intercom finally buzzed.
“Hey mate, sorry for being late.”
I buzzed Matt in and he had a lost look about him. I rehearsed complaints and angry lines in my head over and over, but upon seeing that face, I couldn’t bring myself to yell at him. Instead, I nodded and directed him into the bathroom. Without even inspecting the crack closely, he said:
“Well … Mate. This is an emergency repair. What took you so long?”
I tried so hard not to point out the irony in that question, but given that Ada was around and I didn’t want to sound like an ass, I nodded showed him the way out.
“I’ll be back next week, eh?” He pulled out his phone and noted something down. “And oh! I live just down the street from you so anytime next week could work. But …” He paused.
“What it is?” I crossed my arms. This time around I was on the verge of strangling someone.
“You can’t shower for a few days because it’ll just …” He passed some air between his teeth that was meant to sound like running water. “Leak downstairs you know. But I’ll be back next week. You’ll be showering soon enough.”
And then he walked out while whistling. I closed the door and looked at Ada. She shrugged and said: “Well, surely you don’t need to shower every single day.”
But for me, not showering daily was a crime so I had to find an alternative solution. I called Jay and asked if I could shower at his apartment, but after a test run, I decided against it. Though his place wasn’t that far from mine, carrying around a bath towel in the streets at 1 am every day with messy, damp hair was not my definition of convenience.
After enduring those judgemental stares from my fellow Melburnians, I spotted my ultimate solution when I stopped at a traffic light. There was a 24hr gym below my apartment and I just happened to have a key card because a year ago, the gym coerced me into a permanent contract with them. For once, a mistake turned into a lifesaver, and over the following days, I became the “shower guy” at the gym and it would always go along the lines of:
Receptionist: “Hey! Back at it again?”
Me: “Sure.”
Receptionist: “Did you have a good workout?”
Me: “Just worked out how not to stink like a horse.”
Receptionist: “You haven’t touched any of the equipment?”
Me: “Does that mean you’ll charge me less for my membership?”
Of course, he said no and this went on for nearly two weeks before Matt sent me another message.
“Sorry, mate! I broke my leg last week and I was only back to work yesterday. Still have a cast on and everything would you mind if we come over tomorrow?”
At first, I thought the entire thing was a big practical joke, but apparently not. On the day of the appointed-shower-fixing-day, I dragged Jay over to write. We wrote for a few hours on the couch and Jay turned to me:
“Where the hell is this plumber? Wasn’t he supposed to come over at ten?” It was 12 pm already.
“I don’t know.” I drank some tea out of my cup. “Maybe he broke a leg?”
And 30 minutes later the plumber rang the intercom and came to my door with a giant scooter and a cast on his leg.
“Sorry, mate. I have a few more jobs around town.” No wonder he broke a leg because the scooter was made of metal and was as tall as himself.
“That’s a big-ass scooter,” Jay said, “How fast could it go?”
“Oh, man this thing goes up to eighty!” He patted the thing and rolled it into the door, dirtying my carpet.
“Don’t you need a license for that thing?” I said and looked at his cast.
He looked up and shrugged. “Well, maybe. Last week I broke me ankle and it’s still paying off.”
After he settled in, he dragged a few barrels into my bathroom and before he barricaded the door, “I’ll keep it quiet, eh? Won’t be long. It’ll be done real soon.”
And so, a string of loud bangs and chainsaw noise followed. I basked in the noise because it was the perfect revenge on my neighbor for their 2 am screams and knocks. After a while, everything settled down. I looked around my apartment and said to Jay:
“Great, now everything’s covered in dust.”
Just as I was about to take out my vacuum cleaner, the intercom rang again and I heard a deep voice. “Mate. Is this 919?”
“Yes, and this is?”
“Just open the door, mate. I’ll be up in the second.”
A man showed up at my door with a military-grade dust-proof mask and a terminator-grade vacuum cleaner. The one that you had to carry on your back to operate. He switched the thing on and the promise of “being quiet” went completely out of the window. The terminator did a decent job and exited my apartment without a word.
After the terminator left, the scooter guy finally emerged from my bathroom. “It’s almost done.” My bathroom looked trashed and I saw my bath towel on the toilet seat, completely drenched and soiled. He traced my gaze and smiled with that same lost look. I didn’t say a word. “We’ll find a shower base for ya, eh?”
“Yeah… sure…” I kept the door open and Matt walked out with essentially the entire base of my shower. He greeted the terminator at the door and hopped on his scooter. The cast clattered against the metal frame.
“We’ll be back in a few days, eh?” The scooter powered on and the two disappeared from the hallway.
“Ok… then.”
I shook myself awake and turned to Jay: “They said they’ll fix the shower, not take it away. They completely managed to do the latter without finishing the former.”
“Well,” Jay walked up to me and peeked into my bathroom, “You know what?”
“What?” I tried to keep my cool at the sight of what was essentially a giant hole where my shower used to be.
“At least you’re halfway there.”
Writing is one of those strange things that change with age. And the answer to why I write is a constant work in progress. In a sense, the definition will become simpler and simpler. Eventually, it’ll just end up being: I like it that’s why.
When I read some of my older pieces, I recognized a kind of childish seriousness. It sounded like I was trying to prove something. It also sounded like I was trying to sound really smart and profound. Putting all those things together, I sounded like an ass.
Whereas for now, I don’t really care to write anything that’s serious. I just want to tell stories and I love telling stories. I stood in the line of a Hungry Jack’s and wrote up F.U. Burger. I went on an interesting date and wrote up There’s Another Me Out There and I hated high school so I turned everyone into brainwashed zombies in L’Académie.
There’s this quote I read somewhere by Bertrand Russel that summed things up quite nicely:
“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”
It makes perfect sense because if people truly believe their writing is urgent, profound, or important, they’ll get so worked up and go nuts before committing a sentence to the page, let alone a good story that’ll connect with people.
I don’t want any more nervous breakdowns so I write just to tell stories that will make me think and laugh. And maybe you’ll jump on the wagon and enjoy all that thinking and laughing with me.
On Laziness
To be modern is to realize that even being lazy takes effort. One, I have to get my ass to the grocery store to pick up snacks. Two, I have to schedule a window for relaxation. Three, I’ll accidentally eat up all my snacks before settling on a movie because there’re so many choices. This whole cycle is the reason why I’m the dumbest person when it comes down to movie references.
On Retail
I went to the mall today for a new sweater and it just occurred to me that I found it comforting to be in shopping malls. People were extremely nice to me because they were paid to do so. This took the stress off because the relationship was purely transactional without an ounce of false sincerity. I picked out a sweater and locked myself in a fitting room. Within the first minute, the lady knocked on my door 3 times:
“Is the size ok?”
“Is it too hot in there?”
“Are you feeling comfortable?”
Not even my mom’s that interested in me and it made perfect sense. The entire trick was that they made me feel bad about receiving such grandma-level care. So at the end of the day, I had to pull out my wallet to buy the guilt away. That right there was a prime example of how the retail industry makes its money.
On The Ideal Conversation
People nowadays have too high of a standard for what a good conversation should be. Here’s a revised definition: a good modern conversation for me is simply an exchange where both parties will part ways without:
A: Getting angry at each other.
B: Feeling like they’ve wasted their time.
C: Disclosing anything you’d disclose to your Significant Other or your mom.
Hence, the duration of the said Modern Conversation should be as short as possible. Here’s an example. After I came back from the mall, I got into the lift of my apartment’s lobby. Right before it closed, I held the doors for a girl in a green turtleneck.
“Thank you! Thank you!” She had that frazzled smile of someone just off of work.
“Rough day at work?” I said.
“Yeah… Yeah!” She shoved her phone in her pocket and kept that smile about.
“Which floor?” I pressed 9 and looked at her.
“6… Thank you so much!” The same smile.
I pressed 6 and said: “What do you do?”
“Oh! I work at a marketing agency! And, man! Big day!”
“I feel for you,” I said.
“Yeah. Haha.” A nervous little laugh. “What do you do?”
“I write full time,” Before she could probe deeper, the door opened when the lift reached the 6th floor.
“Oh! This is me! Have a good night!” She hopped out of the lift. I waved and closed both the lift and a Modern Conversation.
1: Wake up at 7 am and think that it’s a good idea to lie back down after a brief phone call. A short nap later, getting up is 10 times harder and it’s already 11 am. This time around the person I called at 7 am has already finished a morning run.
2: Stumble into the kitchen and make bacon and eggs without fail. Lift the wine glass on the kitchen top and discover a ring-shaped wine stain. “They’ll put this on my rent,” I complain to the person on the phone. She suggests some kind of carbonic cleaning solution, but I insist that Ajax will do the trick.
3: Think about leaving the house to get groceries without actually leaving the house. This back and forth goes on for 2 hours.
4: Finally, I head to the grocery store and risk having another anxiety attack because there are other people at Woolworths.
5: Get home and tell the person I need a few hours to “work” and spend those hours drinking 3 bottles of sugar-free coke over David Sedaris’s Masterclass.
6: A few hours later, the person checks in. “How’s it going?” I say to her: “I’m still working.” But in reality, I’m napping over an open copy of The Philosophy of Andy Warhol. The book isn’t the reason for the nap. I nap because it’s the best remedy for overthinking.
7: Wake up from the nap at around 7 pm and decide it’s time to wrap up work for the day. After walking around the apartment for a bit, I realize that my entire career is just an attempt to avoid work.
8: Make dinner at around 8 pm and have it over a glass of wine though I hate wine. I’m only drinking it because dad gave me the bottles and they were free.
9: Waste 4 hours after dinner on phone calls with friends, parents, and the person. Before I know it, it’s 1 am.
10: Sit down to write. Writing when you’re half-awake at 1.30 am is great because it short-circuits any overthinking. In most cases, I don’t even remember what I’ve written until I review it in the morning. That, in a nutshell, is the pinnacle of drafting.
11: 2 am. I crash into bed and immediately descend into a dreamless coma. By the time I wake up, there’s a missed call from the person and her voice-mail brags to me about her amazing morning run. I get up and it’s already 10.30 am. For a person like me, anything that happens before 11 am simply doesn’t exist.
12: Repeat.
The most magical stage of renting an apartment was the inspection stage. It was a Friday morning and Melbourne was just on the verge of Autumn. I entered the city with the intention of securing a new apartment and I met up with my friend Jay in front of The State Library.
“Today’s a big day for you man,” Jay said. “When’s the first inspection?”
“In twenty minutes,” I said.
I booked two inspections. One was a tiny bachelor’s suite behind the library and another was located on a busy street. The one behind the library sounded like an attractive option and the pictures on the site looked halfway decent. When I booked the inspection, I had the firm conviction to land it then and there, however, I completely changed my mind the minute I saw the building. From across the street, Jay frowned at the apartment complex:
“What the hell is that?”
“That’s the first apartment,” I said. The building was a slab of concrete held together by hideous blue steel frames. Construction noise was also a constant near the apartment building so if I landed it, I basically had to cross sleep off of the list of human essentials. We walked up to the door of the lobby and there was a huge print of a tropical coconut tree plastered on the wall and the space was decorated with plastic orange dots. I didn’t know what they tried to achieve with the aesthetic but one thing was clear. To me, that specific combination of things – the concrete building and the abominable lobby decor – made me want to throw up. To live in that apartment, I’d have to drive to a bulk department store and get a batch of vomit bags. But, for the record, being a student in the liberal arts, I simply didn’t have money to afford that many vomit bags. I turned to Jay: “Let’s go. This is not worth it.”
“If you rent here, I think you’ll get stabbed in the hallway.” Jay laughed. I looked into the lobby with the orange plastic dots and thought: absolutely no way.
Jay didn’t come to the second apartment inspection because his girlfriend was mad at him. I circled around the block and ended up on the street where the building was. It was such a busy district that cars constantly honked at one another, but compared to the constant construction work, I had nothing to complain about. I went to the address of the apartment building and spotted a lobby that was much more bearable. It was pretending to be something it wasn’t with its marble floor and landing mirrors, but in short, it was something I could live with. I stood below in the streets and spotted a young woman in a brown overcoat. She looked around the block and looked up at the building. I walked up to her.
“Are you also here for the inspection?”
She turned to me. A second later, she said: “Sure.” and gave me one of those “nice to meet you” smiles. I looked into the streets and saw a balding short man in a suit coming our way in rapid steps. Everything about him slipped into the perfect description of a real estate agent. They were people I’d never be but nevertheless still needed. After the agent walked past us the girl said:
“So, why an apartment in the city center?” She took a step back and tried to figure me out. “What do you do?”
“I’m a writer,” I said and immediately regretted it. “I mean, also a student from Melbourne U. Are you also studying?
“I’m studying a master’s.” She looked up at the apartment building. The real estate agent came out of the lobby and I waved at him. “Do you know him?” She turned to me.
“Him? No.” I gave a dry laugh. I didn’t have to know a real estate agent to wave at him. He sounded a bit Russian: “Hey, I’m John.” He reached out his hand and his shake was firm. “Shall we?” He buzzed open the front door to the lobby and led us in.
The first room he led us to looked like a college dorm and I shook my head. It looked nothing like the pictures. Even the most assorted interior designer couldn’t turn that place around. The girl had the same disgusted face about. She nodded and we both exited the room and John greeted us with a smile. “How was everything?” The girl and I looked at each other and John got the drift. “Well, there’s another room upstairs you guys could inspect…”
We ducked into a lift and after a few floors up, another suite was ready for us to inspect. John opened the door and I liked the place immediately. It was quaint and bare but I thought with a little bit of work, it could turn into a dream apartment. I turned to the girl and she nodded: “Needs some cleaning.”
“Lots of cleaning.” I looked out of the window and saw an old church right across the street. “This is the place I think,” I said. She turned to me like I was a mad person. “Are you sure?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I really like it.”
“See, I don’t know.” She headed for the door and I followed. John greeted us at the elevator with a binder full of paperwork. “So,” He said, “If you’re interested when do you guys want to move in here?”
“Huh?” We looked at each other. I had a brown turtleneck on and she had a brown overcoat. John waited for a response. “We’re not a couple,” I said.
“Oh… I’m so sorry.” John said and scratched that patch where his hair used to be, “follow me then.” We went into the elevator. On our way down to the ground floor, John kept giving me side glances, and right before the elevator “dinged” at the sight of G on the elevator’s display, he shoved a piece of paper in my hand. “Alright, nice to meet you.” He then turned to the girl and shoved another piece in her hand. “If you pay the bond and the first month of rent, you could move in by Thursday.” He said in that urgent, inflated voice which reminded me of an auctioneer. The girl looked at me with raised brows and I shrugged. We went out of the lobby and I shook John’s hand: “I’m taking it.”
“Yes… yes. Good. Just get the paperwork through and we…” Real Estate agents were a restless bunch. “Sorry, I’ve another in… 5 minutes. So, just email… Great. Later!”
I stood in the early autumn’s wind with the girl and we looked at one another. “Remember.” She said with a smile. “Needs some cleaning.”
I looked down at the paper John shoved in my hand and nodded: “Lots of cleaning.”
1: On dating apps, one should aspire to be liked by dogs.
2: A guy’s ideal Facebook profile picture always looks like a headshot from a real estate agency.
3: Frozen meals are perfectly acceptable for a single 20 something. But your mom and your sister might yell at you for your ineptitude.
4: You shouldn’t consult anyone who had been in a relationship for more than 2 years for dating advice.
5: People who are obsessed with positive psychology are generally the biggest assholes.
6: In a plumber’s mind, 9 am and 1 pm are synonymous.
7: Teaching from bathrooms is somehow acceptable conduct at a prestigious University.
“Men’s handkerchiefs?” The woman at the gift shop looked at me. “No sorry we’ve only got women’s”
I spent the entire morning at the library, bored out of my mind. After that, I circled around the building and went to a bookshop at the back of the library, and browsed the shelves. The obnoxious music there was hand-picked by staff who gloated in their refined taste. I stood still in front of the Modern Classics section and a young man in a black coat came up to the shelf next to me. He pulled out Infinite Jest and I said:
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”
He looked at me and said: “I know who you are.”
“You what?” I looked at him.
He smiled, “I’m Oscar and I’m writing a play. Aren’t you that writer from YouTube?”
That’s the thing with artistic types. They think the world revolves around them. I nodded with a smile and he invited me to see his play. More often than not, university plays are oxymoronic without the oxy. Naturally, I didn’t want to go. I forced a smile and walked away. The conviction was to strangle the next person who’d bring up anything about staging a production. After that, I ended up at a café on the east side of the State Library.
“Sorry… The kitchen’s closed we only serve coffee.” The waiter said.
“Coffee’s fine.” I said, “May I take a seat?”
“Sorry, you’d have to wait here if you want to get your take-away cup…”
“But I want to dine in.” I said.
“Yes, but you’d have to wait here for your coffee.”
After that wit-contest with the waiter, I ended up with a seat and started writing in my notebook. The sun was fair and an overcoat was perfect for the weather. I closed my book after downing the sour cup of coffee and wandered through the streets. Towards noon the weather betrayed me. I started sweating and I thought about grandpa’s handkerchief. He always had one and he wiped his face with it, blew his nose in it, and cleaned any suspicious lumps off of tables with it. Grandpa’s handkerchief was off-limits, at least for me. Borrowing it meant I had to deal with all the surprises packed in it. He died 3 years ago and whenever I sweated like a pig, I could not stop thinking about that handkerchief and how my life would completely transform if I had one in my pocket. I went to a gift store above a bookseller and the woman looked at me like I was a deranged person. “Men’s handkerchiefs? No, we don’t have any. Wait a minute, men’s handkerchiefs?”
I escaped the gift store and entered what looked like a grooming supply store for men. The guy there wore a black apron. The wall was lined with wooden sculptures of animal heads, shelves of whisky bottles, and straight razors next to lotions. Right after I asked if they had men’s handkerchiefs, the guy in the apron ran upstairs without an answer. Maybe the question was so outrageous that the apron man thought abandoning the store was more preferable than dealing with me, but he eventually came back down with a packet of 3 handkerchiefs.
“That’s $40 for the pack. Really good. Sourced from the UK.” I nodded. In my opinion, selling anything in a pack of three was a ridiculous idea unless you were selling socks. I said thanks and walked out. After that, I went to the State Library’s dome and read there for the entire afternoon. At around 6.00 pm the janitor kicked me out and I went home for dinner and planned my early retirement.
1: Make sure the car is packed to the brim and make sure a sharp left turn could shatter 3 plates in your trunk.
2: Drive your car through a city that’s known for its nightmarish hook-turns, screaming trams, and pedestrians who never follow the crossing signals. After arriving at the real estate agency, unintentionally park at a bus stop because the indicative sign that tells you where to park and where not to park is a mess that makes no sense.
3: Locate the real estate agency hidden in an alleyway with only a buzzer and a small door. Ring the buzzer and listen to the reception lady. She’ll buzz open the door that’ll reveal a staircase. The trip upstairs will make you feel like a spy. Enjoy it while you can, because the next step is…
4: Greet the reception lady in the flesh who was grumpy over the phone last Thursday. You’ll realize she’s not actually that mean in real life and the phone call was probably just a reflection of a shit Thursday afternoon. She’ll lead you into a room where two other grumpy men sit at neighboring desks, hacking away at their keyboards. “Please read through this.” Then she’ll leave you in the room. The “this” she refers to is a thick stack of paper you have to pretend to read through and after that, you’ll have to sign your name on the last page. As you’re pretending to read through the pages, you’ll hear intermittent sighs from those grumpy gentlemen in the same room as you. That’ll make you glad for choosing any profession besides real estate, even if that profession is called being an artist.
5: Get your key after the reception lady returns and rambles for 20 minutes straight. Nod your way through all of her affirmations. It’s easier this way because you’ll get your keys quicker.
6: After exiting the real estate agency, find a ticket tucked under your windshield wiper for parking at the bus stop. Count your blessings, because it’s miles better than finding a grumpy bus driver instead.
7: Drive to your apartment with your key and lug everything to your apartment building in a ridiculous trolley your parents lent you. And because it’s a Friday afternoon, practice shallow breathing when you receive funny looks from CBD’s pedestrians. When everything’s upstairs, realize that you are on the brink of strangling someone.
8: Spend the next two hours assembling that lamp and that flimsy bookshop you bought from IKEA. Note, the interweb isn’t available because your phone provider’s satellite decided to self-destruct a few hours ago. You’re left with your own thoughts and you’re permitted to curse your way through the confusing IKEA manuals.
9: Vacuum the entire apartment and declare war with the little bugs who live alongside the window sill. You can choose your battle gear from the list below:
· A Dyson vacuum cleaner with a fuzzy head
· A wet tea towel
· Bug spray and paper
· Your bare hands (not recommended)
10: After exterminating the bugs, unpack all your stuff and go downstairs to the Greek guy from the convenience store. Ask: “where’s the dumpster?” and he’ll look at you like you’re the dumbest person alive. He’ll tell you that the dumpster is behind a hidden door and you’ll think to yourself: how in the world would anyone find that? End of the case. “No drama mate.” The guy will tell you. Then, totter downstairs to the said secret door while hugging a huge ball of cardboard trash you’ve accumulated from your great IKEA assemblage.
11: After getting rid of the trash, it’s time to run some groceries. Make the fatal mistake of carrying your laptop bag with you, because you’ll end up with 4 bags. Bob left to right and make your way up to your apartment again after acquiring the said grocery. Have a drink out of that bottle of Pepsi you just bought and realize that your tote bag now smells like roasted chicken.
12: Discover that there’s an ongoing runny water sound behind your oven. Your apartment’s probably right next to the drainpipe and there’s nothing you can do about it. Don’t get on the phone with your agent now, because it’s Friday and you’re probably sick of the reception lady’s voice. Prepare yourself for a week of agony because the water noise sounds like someone’s taking an infinite piss.
13: Sit down on your couch and turn on that lamp you’ve assembled and bask in that sound of someone taking an infinite piss. Pour yourself a little whisky you just bought. You deserve that too. Throw the roasted chicken in the fridge when it’s still warm because you’re too tired to eat. Put some music on and go to sleep.
Back when I was in the fourth grade my teachers diagnosed me with Mathematical dyslexia. A 3 could turn into a 6 and a 4 could turn into a 7 in the same line of calculation. The unanimous agreement from all those teachers in the office was: “how the hell did you get that answer?” whenever I turned in a piece of work. After that, I stopped turning in work and my grades naturally fell into the toilet. Apparently, this dyslexia was a real condition that could be diagnosed and cured, but given that I’d decided to hate mathematics forever after that meeting in the 4th grade, I never got a diagnosis.
After graduating from high school, I thought I had left the condition behind for good, but I was wrong. Though I no longer had to do maths, the trick reeked in other corners of my adult life and made sending packages off at post-offices a total nightmare.
Around Christmas, I wanted to send off a gift to a friend in Canada. I copied down his address on a little piece of paper and went to the post office. The line was long and the office was really hot. Beads of sweat dripped onto my glasses and I couldn’t wait to get to the front of the line. Eventually, a grumpy lady greeted me and told me to speak up because I was too quiet behind the mask. I yelled out loud: “I WANT TO SEND THIS PACKAGE OFF TO CANADA” and risked sounding like an American in the line. She gave me a form to fill out and told me to step aside. I stood there and took out my piece of paper with the address and immediately I doubted myself. Was the address right on the paper? In Australia, postcodes were pretty intuitive. They were 4-digit codes and were easy to remember. In Canada, however, postcodes were two lumps of numbers and letters crushed together. In short, it was a nightmare for my dyslexic brain.
The doubt got to me and I called that friend in Canada though it cost a fortune. Someone picked up and I said: “Hey, can you send me that…”
“Sorry, who is this?” A woman answered the phone.
“Hmm, this is Cooper’s phone, right?” I said.
“Yeah, he’s making a sandwich, he’ll be back in five.”
I stood there at the desk of the post-office amidst the stifling heat. Next to me, an old couple was super stressed out about sending off a package that one of them was pacing around the office, while the other one was on the phone, speaking rapidly. Sweat continued to drip down my glasses and right before I was about to wipe it, Cooper came on the line: “Hey, pal I’m sorry, I…”
“Yeah, making a sandwich, like that’s the most important thing in the world!” I said and started pacing the office myself like the old couple. “Now, what’s your address again?”
“I thought I gave it to you.”
“Canadian post-codes are weird I want to make sure I’ve got the right one.”
“The one I sent you should be…”
“No, send it to me again.”
I copied the address down from the screen and checked it 20 million times. The old couple went off to the counter and the lady took their package and chucked it into a basket. After that, I went up to the counter, and right before she was about to chuck my package into the same basket, I said: “Could I please double-check it?”
“You can’t change anything now.” She said.
“I just need to make sure…”
“You can’t change anything now.”
“The postcode might’ve been…”
“You can’t change anything now.”
The thought of getting the address wrong plagued me for 3 long days. Best case scenario: the address doesn’t exist. Worst case scenario: some Canadian would open up the door and jump at the thought of a package from Australia. To them, the name of the country was synonymous with poisonous spiders and giant possums that ate out people’s eyeballs.
After sending off the package I caught a train that passed by 3 different high schools and a lot of loud kids in uniforms came in the carriage. I was a little annoyed. After a little while of shaking my head and looking out of the window, I realized something. When I was younger, I remembered looking at those grumpy people on the train and thought: I’d never end up like that when I’m older. Yet there I was, squinting at a postcode at the post-office and traveling on a train full of people who were younger than me. With the passing of each station, I realized that I had morphed into, out of all things, a grumpy adult.
Hill of Content Bookshop, Melbourne
Before I became self-employed, I worked shifts at a local independent bookshop. I took down a few notes during my time there and came up with a list of guidelines, if you will, that will make your bookshop visits more pleasant.
1: Standing in the middle of isles is an invitation for thousands of “excuse mes” if not a few angry shoves. Safe zones are located near the corners of the shelves.
2: Please do not put a book back on the shelf if you’re unsure where you got it from. The last time I checked, someone left Lolita under YA and Star Wars novels under biographies. Leave the book on a bench or on the trolley. It will make recovery easier.
3: Keep kids under supervision at all times. They are the definition of chaos. It typically takes us three days to recover a section of the store raided by kids. So, please.
4: Hearing about a book “from the radio” and knowing it has a blue cover don’t make it easier for us to find the book.
5: If you can’t reach a book from the top shelf, please grab a staff member. The climb is not worth the risk.
6: If a book is not on the shelf, it’s probably not in stock. As independent bookshops, the stock typically goes out ASAP. There’s nothing “at the back” of the store.
7: When placing an order, please make sure your name and your number are written in a way intelligible to a 4th grader. Otherwise, don’t get angry at us for butchering your name or ordering the book for the wrong person altogether.
8: If you have heard nothing from us about an order, it means the book hasn’t arrived yet. Incessant calling won’t magically materialize your book.
9: Calling to see if the store’s open is a very 1970s thing to do.
10: When you’re in line for checkout, please refrain from further browsing. It puts us in a very awkward position and it holds up the line.
Do you ever feel like you’re the main character after watching a film? Just for that brief ten-minute window you are not quite yourself and it feels good, but after that, you’ll slide right back into your little everyday self.
It’s all the same with reading. After reading a killer chapter from a novel or a brilliant short story, just for a brief window of time, I’ll become that author. My voice will change and when I sit down to write, the words I produce will read like parodies of writers I admire. That’s why when I feel inspired, I usually produce my worst writing.
The best stuff comes, in my experience, when I’m just sitting on my ass on a Saturday night with leftover pizza boxes lying around. Because then, I’m not in a space to even try to be someone else.
But the scariest thing is when I’m frank with myself, I rarely want people to know what’s happening in my head. Suddenly, it’s all too personal. People don’t need to see that crap. Suddenly, writing feels like standing stark naked in front of a group of imaginary friends, and the only sensible thing to do is to run away.
Writing in your own voice is scary. You might think it’s romantic to discover your voice, but when you actually find out what you sound like in writing, you might actually hate it, especially if you tried to write like someone else your whole life. In my experience, whenever I’ve written something that’s entirely mine, inadequacy is the first thing I feel. I’m left with only myself, however, broken and disturbed. But then, it’s easier to sit down and write again because now there’s a reason to improve.
“Don’t try” doesn’t give you permission to write pages of garbage and call them gold, but still:
When you “try” to write, the words are not real. The act of trying is the act of making up stuff to sound smarter than you are. Those paragraphs you’ve written are babbles with no substance.
When you “try” to write, sure, you can stack up the pages and call yourself prolific. But you’re running away from the fact that you have nothing to say.
“Don’t try” means allowing life experiences to wash over you. Writing without living is silly.
“Don’t try” means being patient. You can’t force yourself to be wiser than you are.
“Don’t try” means acknowledging that you don’t have it yet. Maybe in a few years or a decade, just not now.
“Don’t try” also means that you can’t be a copycat anymore. Try-hards will always end up being parodies of other authors.
In conclusion: invent nothing. Write what you know or wait until you’ve something to say.
(A Note To Myself)