I Went to the Woods…

First light yesterday I uncovered my copy of H.D. Thoreau’s Walden, forgotten long ago under a pile of exercise books and other scraps. The introduction read like a lecture.

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

Unfortunately, [we are] confined to this theme by the narrowness of [our] experience.

Thoreau – a 19th century New England author – became disenchanted with urban life, eventually moving to live off the land in a cabin he’d built near Walden Pond. The reasoning behind his asceticism lay in a belief that modern urban life had become aimlessly reflexive and spiritually arduous.

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end.

Lately Thoreau’s disillusionment occupies my thoughts.

His neighbours rejected nature and her solitary life in favour of the city and the company of citizens. This brought about a shift in the perception of the self. As Rousseau put it, the savage lived within himself, whereas the citizen knows only how to live in the opinion of others.

We - in turn - have rejected the city for a virtual world; self- and worldview remain reflections of outside opinion, yet we are more alone, and genuine interaction is ever harder. Philosophy of life aside, one consequence has been an incremental increase in the difficulty of producing worthwhile art. Perhaps because art is a reproduction of the very lives we deny to fully live.

Most nights before sleeping I lay supine on my mattress counting how much I’ve missed staring at my mobile phone. It’s a depressing amount, as attested by my eyes and nape which wail in pain. Sooner or later fatigue overwhelms, wishful promises are whispered, and four tired eyelids kiss each other goodnight… tomorrow will be different, I need to rid myself of the bastard phone.

Change in one’s habits presupposes a reason.

Thoreau wanted to live deep and put to rout all that was not life. B&A readers - myself included - might fancy ourselves writers, photographers, poets, or playwrights; whichever it may be, most of us have an interest in reclaiming our artistic expression. Whatever the goal, the method remains the same: lending undivided attention to our first-person experience.

Ernst Haas

Photographer, you snooze… you know what they say

Ernst Haas’s collection of colour photographs from the 50s and 60s holistically captures the New Yorker. His title of photojournalist is well-deserved. Each photograph embodies the story of an infinitesimal moment of the city’s unending urban blitz. Look away for even a second, and you miss hundreds of these beautifully simple moments.

Urban photographers know better than anyone that the right frame won’t wait around to be captured, it’s fleeting and must be hunted down mercilessly. Real hunters will concur, knowing full well the impossibility of shooting down a pheasant with the one hand while browsing through their discover page with the other.

Deaf musicians open your ears

Regretfully we cannot all be Beethoven. Thankfully most of us don’t need to. One swift motion removing a pair of headphones is enough to eliminate all obstruction between our ears and the city’s ambient music.

Why do so? I’m no musician so take it from Miles Davis. In the summer of 1990, sitting in his New York apartment with the windows open wide, the record player off and no company in the room to produce so much as a whisper, he heard unnoticed music.

The street bustle, the zoom of New York’s lemon taxis, stray shouts having escaped their creators and scaled a dozen storeys to his ear’s great enjoyment. Davis sat there and listened, taking it all in. By 1991 he was finishing up the recording of Doo-Bop; an album – his last – that made music out of city noise.

Give a listen to High Speed Chase, a euphonic traffic jam. Sonya, two lovers’ shadows locked in battle on the backlit curtains of the tenement across the street. Mystery, leaning catlike over the window limen, fourteen storeys above the muffled street.

Next time you’re caught in traffic roll down your windows and try to listen to the same music Davis heard that summer 32 years ago.

Playwrights exit your chambers!

Authors can be divided into two rough categories: those who seldom leave their place of writing and depend on others as a point of contact with the world, and those whose lives are an unending adventure serving as material for their work.

Miguel de Cervantes belongs to the latter category. The first part of his life was spent waging naval battle against the Ottomans, held captive in Algiers and imprisoned in Seville, learning the lesson of life before settling down to put it all on paper.

The semi-autobiographical style of his magnum opus, Don Quixote de la Mancha, is paradigmatic of the vast content served to authors by life’s manifold accidents.

Cervantes’ most brilliant passages occur when he takes on the mantle of observer of life and combines his tendency to romanticise with his profound realistic sense. Not pulling beauty out of thin air but seeing the most he could in what was truly there.

So what…?

I’ll be the first to admit that what I’m suggesting – forgetting out mobile phones and becoming more engaged with the world around us – is much easier said than done. I - like most people my age - fall victim to the algorithms and waste away in front of a screen more often than I’d like to admit.

When it happens, I feel paralysed. It’s a waste.

Our predecessors wrote or read escapist literature to be transported to blissful imaginary worlds. We escape our world – which has worsened by some measures but improved by many others – to enter an even more depressing world governed by the interests of Google and Meta software engineers. In doing so, we are slowly sacrificing our sense of beauty and appreciation of inherent quality.

Hydrangeas are no longer beautiful but make for beautiful photos. The club music can’t be enjoyed if it isn’t also shared. Our ice cream may not taste good but at least it looks so. Form has become more important than matter.

How do we reverse this? I do not know.

Should we try to reverse this? I believe so, but perhaps I am wrong; a luddite who, in failing to find beauty in the filter social media places on daily life, is guilty of the crime he himself condemns.

Live Deliberately: A Life Recorded

I Went to the Woods…

First light yesterday I uncovered my copy of H.D. Thoreau’s Walden, forgotten long ago under a pile of exercise books and other scraps. The introduction read like a lecture.

We commonly do not remember that it is, after all, always the first person that is speaking.

Unfortunately, [we are] confined to this theme by the narrowness of [our] experience.

Thoreau – a 19th century New England author – became disenchanted with urban life, eventually moving to live off the land in a cabin he’d built near Walden Pond. The reasoning behind his asceticism lay in a belief that modern urban life had become aimlessly reflexive and spiritually arduous.

The twelve labors of Hercules were trifling in comparison with those which my neighbors have undertaken; for they were only twelve, and had an end.

Lately Thoreau’s disillusionment occupies my thoughts.

His neighbours rejected nature and her solitary life in favour of the city and the company of citizens. This brought about a shift in the perception of the self. As Rousseau put it, the savage lived within himself, whereas the citizen knows only how to live in the opinion of others.

Change in one’s habits presupposes a reason.

Photographer, you snooze… you know what they say

Deaf musicians open your ears

Regretfully we cannot all be Beethoven. Thankfully most of us don’t need to. One swift motion removing a pair of headphones is enough to eliminate all obstruction between our ears and the city’s ambient music.

Why do so? I’m no musician so take it from Miles Davis. In the summer of 1990, sitting in his New York apartment with the windows open wide, the record player off and no company in the room to produce so much as a whisper, he heard unnoticed music.

Give a listen to High Speed Chase, a euphonic traffic jam. Sonya, two lovers’ shadows locked in battle on the backlit curtains of the tenement across the street. Mystery, leaning catlike over the window limen, fourteen storeys above the muffled street.

Next time you’re caught in traffic roll down your windows and try to listen to the same music Davis heard that summer 32 years ago.

Playwrights exit your chambers!

Authors can be divided into two rough categories: those who seldom leave their place of writing and depend on others as a point of contact with the world, and those whose lives are an unending adventure serving as material for their work.

Miguel de Cervantes belongs to the latter category. The first part of his life was spent waging naval battle against the Ottomans, held captive in Algiers and imprisoned in Seville, learning the lesson of life before settling down to put it all on paper.

The semi-autobiographical style of his magnum opus, Don Quixote de la Mancha, is paradigmatic of the vast content served to authors by life’s manifold accidents.

Cervantes’ most brilliant passages occur when he takes on the mantle of observer of life and combines his tendency to romanticise with his profound realistic sense. Not pulling beauty out of thin air but seeing the most he could in what was truly there.

So what…?

When it happens, I feel paralysed. It’s a waste.

Hydrangeas are no longer beautiful but make for beautiful photos. The club music can’t be enjoyed if it isn’t also shared. Our ice cream may not taste good but at least it looks so. Form has become more important than matter.

How do we reverse this? I do not know.

Should we try to reverse this? I believe so, but perhaps I am wrong; a luddite who, in failing to find beauty in the filter social media places on daily life, is guilty of the crime he himself condemns.