Looking forward to hearing a new album from The Avalanches
There are so many happy and meaningful memories that I have associated with their music.
How Alain de Botton can change your life
My partner is often frustrated when I mention a book that I’ve read
This will happen when she’s explaining her thoughts and I’ll chip in with an author or thinker that wrote something similar.
She’ll protest that she arrived at the conclusion with her own reasoning and of course, me being university-educated, can’t see the issue with providing a reference as a kind of handle.
So I’m reluctant to share this excellent video with her.
I’ve followed Alain de Botton for nearly half my life and still recall buying his book about Proust when it was recommended by Barry Jones.
In particular I've been impressed by Alain’s ideas about the role of art and wish more people would realise the important place it can occupy in developing their happiness.
This video about relationships contains a number of lessons that my partner has arrived at through her own thought processes, but since I want to keep her to myself I’ll share Alain’s insights.
In particular he notes how attachment styles vary and this was something my partner observed long ago, that we have similar experiences in our childhoods.
It also describes how being honest with emotions is fundamental to unpacking our personalities and developing new strategies to recognise shortcomings as well as potential.
Too often we pursue relationships with a view they’re meant to be easy, when the really important thing is that they can accommodate and support our growth.
While the whole video works to build an argument, you can skip to the last few minutes and he does a recap of the key takeaway points but if you ask my partner she'll probably say that it's obvious.
Was feeling nervous might delete later
It is one of only four in the world and the exhibit was estimated to be worth $1 million about a decade ago.
Two medical students spent 1,500 hours dissecting an entire human nervous system in 1925.
They began at the brain's base and worked their way down, managing to keep the system in one piece.
The identity of the person whose nervous system is on display is unknown, but Museum Director Jason Haxton has said that the body likely came from a poor house or a prison.
Writers create networks
When I came home I told my son how surprising it was to be the only male in the room.
"Good on you," he deadpanned. "Showing up for your culture."
One of the writing exercises was based on the famous six-word story written by Ernest Hemingway: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."
I enjoyed writing a series of short stories, with these being my favourites:
- The bookstore sold only loose pages.
- His voice broke records and cassettes.
- Their cat brought home stray velociraptors.
Matter of perspective
My mother is fond of saying that looking at exhibition allows one to see the world through someone else's eyes.
In that way I think art builds empathy.
There's a similar potential in travel, but it seems as though many people copy a product or buy one.
Here Proust reminds me of an observation in Alan Alda's book, where he talked about learning how to engage in conversation.
His conclusion was that one doesn't wait for an opportunity to speak, but has to be willing to be changed by what they hear.
Cooking with gas
For me there have been experiences where it's less about gaslighting and more about my whim of steel, after I feel strongly about something until I find an alternate perspective and can see a broader view.
That process is an internal one and not easily seen by those who would hold me to a previously held position.
Increasingly I'm learning to bite my tongue until that arrives, but it's taken years to give myself time to consider opinions.
Having kids to reflect those experiences has been a useful part of this learning.
Monoculture myth
One of the Australian political debates in recent weeks has been around returning the country to a monoculture
This has been of of those pointed remarks that stupidly aims at the country’s longterm view of being multicultural because, after all, we’re largely a population of migrants.
In some ways the Australian fear of being swamped by a foreign culture is a response to our unease about the history of the nation, which formed from colonisation of the oldest continuous human cultures in the First Nations.
It’s a potent raw nerve for conservative politicians and has been exploited in fears of “boat people” and most recently been espoused as the desire for a monoculture that was expressed by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.
Given my parents were both born overseas, you can likely guess where I sit in this debate.
Wherever you look in the history of Australia (or the continent before that name) it was never a monoculture -- even the centuries of rivalry between the Angilican and Catholic churches points to the conflict between English and Irish migrants from the day soldiers escorted convicts onto a sandy beach.
However, I was watching a Rick Beato discussion just now and realised the notion of a monoculture is another of the “Golden Age” type arguments that somehow propose returning to an earlier time that will never be within reach because technology now prevents it.
There’s this thing that we call the monoculture that were, where hit songs back in 2005 if you had a hit song, everyone knew the song.
It was played at the stores, grocery stores, everywhere you went. It was on the radio, right?
And then the age of algorithms started happening, right?
…And there’s very little shared music because of that.
Magic Mountain's Mr Magic
Leeton's Mr Magic seems worthy of a mention
I remember he entertained a birthday party for one of my kids soon after we arrived in town.
A
few years later and David Boyd was the sole remaining member of a
writing group and asked Western Riverina Arts to help with a
workshop to acquit funds.
There weren't many people at the event, aside from the Regional Arts Development Officer and myself.
David
was a bit critical about the content and the outcome, which I think
might explain how it was he ended up being the sole remaining member.
Later in my role as Communications Officer at WRA I wrote about Mr Magic's workshops, which were a wonderful initiative that aimed to help neurodivergent kids.
The
book details his childhood experiences of WWII and was interesting for
the somewhat dubious deals he made to support himself during those
chaotic years.
I'd need to re-read it to remind myself of the details, but the blurb on the back cover notes:
His childhood experiences gave him the ability of spotting a good business deal when one presented itself. Or to use his favorite [sic] term "A great little earner". But unlike his child hood earners, [sic?] these would all be legit.
After I read the book I
pestered David when I saw him with his dog at the local park, hoping
he'd let me proofread the second volume detailing his life after moving
to Australia.
Another funny detail to share is
that his home used to have a sign out front saying "The Boyd Nest" and
you couldn't help but read it with his English accent!
Lexical gaps
English is such a weird mash of languages that I expect some of the gaps are explained by their origins.
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