I can have trouble taking myself serious when I paint or write, even to an extent that it often makes me stop doing what I want to do. I mirror my own thoughts onto others and think that many people have no idea that something like painting is actually working, it requires a lot of effort, training and planning. I see them happily thinking: “I want that too. Nice to do nothing all day and to paint a little when ever you want.”
I have the same thoughts about writing. It seems to be useless, something you do when ever you want and most of all, when ever you don’t have anything better to do. But just like with painting, writing also demands a lot of practice, effort, learning (reading) and planning.
I suppose that we are not so much used to people who take time to practice and think about something. People who are not satisfied with the strong pace of the stream of entertainment and information that bombards us every day. Even in a normal workplace there won’t be much time to plan, train and think about things, as it will be more about producing and making money. So the writer or the painter is operating in a niche of its own. The one being most of the time at or around home, apparently doing nothing but having fun with words and articles, or drawings and paintings.
Now it is up to me to convince myself that practicing, just thinking or reading and learning are all legal actions.
Kategori: English
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Writers and Painters
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Liefdeleven by Marcellus Emants
A thought that came up while reading the book (unfortunately in danish).Det er i livet nu engang sådan
at der i allerhøjeste grad ikke findes lykken
som vi mener at den burde se ud.
Someone said somewhere that Emants writes rather scientific and perhaps even cold, and Liefdeleven (1916) by Marcellus Emants (1848-1923) reminds me indeed a bit of a scientific study. Emants is known to write about actual persons and situations, and it is generally thought that Liefdeleven is about his third marriage (1904) with a German actress (the name of the main character “Christiaan Duyts” – Duyts meaning “German” in dutch- seems to support this).
I must say that I found it a little hard to get through the first chapters, as it at that point reminded me of a nurse-loves-doctor kind of pocket that comes with the latest ladies magazine.
But as the story progresses it becomes more naturalistic to an extend that it even gets hard to be confronted by many of the conversations/discussions in this part of the book. It was here that I started to suspect that the book referred to, or at least has pieces of, an actual situation in the life of Marcellus Emants.
The book is written from a male perspective which gives it a perhaps interesting one-view-only look upon the problems that arise in the book. It doesn’t help that in a key section of the book (The conversation with doctor Diepe – “Diep” means “Depth” in dutch) one reads about the opinion of another male, who is not exactly taking a female point of view.
After that I got curious to know what would happen next and I did not get disappointed.
I actually don’t think the book is much about how bad it is to be married, or how hard it can be when you meet the wrong person. I think the book is about the reality of life. Some people are lucky and can keep their dreams alive, can be happily married, have a good job so that they never have to suffer in whatever way. They can continue being happy. But what about war, poverty, disaster, crime, sickness or, to a lesser extend, divorce, loneliness or discrimination? These are all aspects of life, and one can argue whether or not a person should experience at least some of these things to experience what life is really about. People that are being born happy and that die happy are lucky and I wish everybody could experience that. But we are part of nature, and nature is not just one happy story.
Life is full of lies, dreams, promises. We all live a lie, and many of us will unravel a few of those lies.
A sidenote:
I think there is a little bit too big a gap between the description of nature in beautiful,original words, very poetic, and the rest of the story. Christiaan is a painter of landscapes, hence the descriptions, but for me it doesn’t really fit into the story. It’s slightly out of tone. It does make me want to try to create poems out of the descriptions though.
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LibraryThing
I spent some time discovering LibraryThing. It was a pleasant surprised to notice how serious the site appears to be. It seems to attract older people who don’t mind some social activity but prefer to do so “without meeting people”.
It basically is a good site to make a list of the books you own and get information about the writer, pictures of book covers, list of other books written by the writer, recommended books that you might like etc. The site links to many large bookshops (including Amazon of course) and many libraries, giving quick access to the details of just about any book in the world. The first 200 books you enter to your collection on the site are for free, after that an annual or a lifetime fee (25 USD) is required.
I started out by adding a few books that I just read, and who knows maybe one day I might pass that 200 books mark. It is fulfilling to think of all the data you can get from your reading habits, probably because it makes you feel that it really represents who you are. When we were teenagers many of us played our music loud to show the world what kind of cool guy/girl we were. That doesn’t really work anymore when you discover that wearing that extra earring doesn’t really make you look smarter, and that to many people it might actually be a sign that “things are not quiet developed up there”. So we middle-aged people try it with books. “I read Socrates” so that makes me smart; “I have more than a thousand books in my library,so don’t you tell me where to buy bread!”
It will take a while for us older people to discover that it is just as silly as writing “Red Hot Chilli Peppers” on your school bag. But until then i’ll fill out the books I read, tag and order them and compare my library with others to see how I am doing. “I’ve got The Poverty of Philosophy by Karl Marx, anyone else who is just as intellectual as me?”.
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Prøvesten
Map of the main attack by the Swedish army on Copenhagen on the 11th of February 1659. Source: WikipediaWhen listening to the danish language program Sproghjørnet I heard a discussion about the word “Prøvesten”. It was said that besides being a stone to test whether a material was what it seemed to be, for example gold, it had also been the name of a ship. This ship, together with other ships, was after ending its duties, sunk to form the basis of a little Island called Prøvesten on which was build a fortress to defend Copenhagen.
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I went looking for this little island on the internet and saw that it is now part of Copenhagen harbour, well connected to the mainland. I also found this map showing the little island of Prøvesten but also the rather immense defense works of Copenhagen. I had hardly realized that those remains of the defense system still exist and that Copenhagen had once been fortress like that. I came to think of this post of Cristhoper’s picture blog with the text explaining about an amazing long siege of Copenhagen.
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It struck me that there is a lot of focus in Denmark on the prehistoric times of the Vikings and before. An enormously rich and unique period of Danish history, but there have been other times, much closer to ours, that have been of major importance to the present state of this part of the world.
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I know a tiny little bit about Swedish supremacy and Danish invasions and interests in the south of Sweden and the Danish interests in the north of Germany. There must have been many wars and events, but it is not a very common thing to discuss this period in the media or elsewhere.
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Was Copenhagen indeed such a strong fort as the remains of its walls suggest?
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Being a Dutchman I remember a story from Danish history books about the Dutch “helping” to free Copenhagen from a siege by the Swedes, and I wondered if it was a part of the same story.
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It is quite amazing to notice that finding information about this period is not that simple. The internet is great, fantastic, but sometimes it is clear that it is also still young and under development.
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Luckily there is Wikipedia telling about the long siege of the apparently well defended and walled city of Copenhagen in 1658 to 1660. And indeed it is confirmed here that the intervention of the Dutch fleet was a major help that probably saved the town. Wikipedia states (without naming a source) that Dutch marines even helped on land, o.a. in this fragment:
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“The moats and the beaches had been kept free of ice, and now the ice free zones were widened to 44 feet with the help from 600 Dutch marines. The ice was thick, and the work was done in heavy snowfall from 4 o’clock in the afternoon till evening on the 10 February.”
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After reading a little bit more about this Swedish attack on Denmark I now understand that Denmark was on the verge of being wiped out completely. A major event as big as the defeat against Germany in 1864. The latter being more often mentioned and commemorated, probably also because it is not that long ago (as a result of this war parts of south Denmark became danish again as late as in 1920). But where as the teaching of history and the culture and identity of the Dutch is mainly based upon the 17th century, it is in Denmark an eventful period that seems to be outside the main interest or perhaps overshadowed by other periods.
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Hail the caesar of your genius
After reading a post by Merlin Mann on the process of starting a project (and to keep going) and after listening to Elizabeth Gilbert in a TED-talk mentioned in the post about nursing your creativity, I understand that they offer a way to deal with one of the major obstacles for writers..
We all know it basically comes down to the old truth of “ You just have to work for it and all will be well”, but it is not so easy in practice for the majority of us..
Both clearly indicate that writing on a daily basis is the key to getting work done and creating possibilities to get inspired during the process. As Merlin puts it in a Tweet:
.“Creative work, summarized: In the time you set aside each day to work your ass off, ignore anything that makes you consider stopping.”
.To be able to do this for a longer period – what about a lifespan? – is undoubtable the key to success. As Merlin stresses, this “anything that makes you consider stopping” is no sinecure.
.The majority of those threats that endanger continuation are based upon fear, and this means fear in all its facets. That is easy to say as fear rules just about anything in our world, but when it comes to for example writing it is all the more clearly. Writing is listening to the voice within, digging for inspiration in the depths of a human being, listening to all the tails from the incredible feedreader in the unmeasurable caves of our head. And what voices will be more loud and clear than the ones that originate of fear?
.To ignore those voices and to keep digging for the gold is a major achievement, reminding me of many classical stories, like for example Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings”. Being a writer, an active and serious one, is going through a lot of darkness, traveling on a seemingly hopeless journey like Frodo did.
.But it is also a quest, something that has to be done, for not doing it equals giving up and letting life age you without truly saving your soul.
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Genius
.In her speech on Tedtalk.com Elizabeth Gilbert tells about her way of dealing with the voices of fear. She admits that they are a serious threat to her existence as a well-functioning human and comes up with a solution. Although being aware that it is not the only and most dependable system possible she states that it does her good and advocates to people to try it out for themselves. The idea originates from ancient Greek and Roman times, and it is not only for that not a revolutionary new idea, but Elizabeth gives a positive approach to it that can be a great relief to many.
.Her “trick” is to put the source of inspiration outside the person and thereby putting the blame for many of the problems the voices in head come up with outside herself. It is in that way not her responsibility to produce another flawless bestseller or her fault when the day’s writing isn’t flowing at all, but it is the inspirational voice from outside her that lets her down. Following old Roman traditions she calls this voice a genius.
But unlike romantic ideas of writers, or any other creative persons, being struck by a sudden moment of inspiration, like an arrow of cupid’s bow, she definately holds on to the idea that all she has to do to let her genius work for her is to show up and work every day. That is the only way to blame her genius and not her, because she was there, writing at her desk, giving the genius a fair chance to work.
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