Warm Recollection #1

Little bitz of words

So this is a new regular Wednesday feature.

When I lived in London and used to get out and about more on things like book tours, my favorite evening activity was to sit alone outside a cafe in some European city I’d never been to before, drinking a long line of local beers and smoking insouciantly and watching the world go by — notepad to hand, along with one or other volume of Jean Baudrillard’s Cool Memories series. I was hip back then, you see.

In this series of books Baudrillard collected observations, aphorisms, and ideas, left unconnected, there to engage with individually. They’re far more accessible than his more substantive works, which are kinda gnarly: I wonder if the aphorism might be the ideal medium for philosophical thought in general, in fact, presenting ideas in isolation without sanding off the edges through the process of laboriously bolting each insight to another. Another example of the uninflected images idea, perhaps.

Another thing I’ve done for a long time is maintain what I call “Bitz” files, jotting down my own little ideas and thoughts as they occur. Sometimes these wind up in books, but it struck me recently that there’s an awful lot still languishing there in the files. I mean, like, about a hundred and fifty thousand words of them.

So I’m going to regularly drop some into this Substack, pretty randomly, in collections of five. Any given one might be from a few weeks ago, or it could be from thirty years back: and you can be the judge of whether they’re interesting, or not. I’m calling them Warm Recollection, in tribute to that irascible brainy Frenchman of yore.

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We are very used to financial constraints and considerations: the cost of having this is not having that. It’s much harder to accept this may work that way with emotions, too, and even with the whole arc of our lives. The cost of keeping this, is not having that. The cost may be permanent — and perhaps that’s the difference. With money there’s the chance or hope we may be able to afford the other thing next year, or the one after that, or sometime. In life and emotions in general, the choice is one-time-only.

The transaction is permanent, and that’s hard. Life is hard.

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You can haunt your own life for years before realizing that you’re dead.

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The story of every ballet boils down to this: “The king and queen have a huge dance in the palace. Everybody dances. A bad guy bewitches the prima ballerina, and she goes off to dance in the forest instead. The hero dances over to the forest, and dances there. There is more dancing, and the timpani may be played to show this is serious stuff. Then there’s a big Battle of the Dances back in the palace, and despite the alleged peril, the dancers who aren’t the main dancers — but are slightly more important than the other dancers — dance a lot, literally, like, forever. There is further dancing, then more dancing, and then the bad guy is suddenly defeated, via dancing. More dancing. The end.”

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Whims are as much a part of your character as your habits. Maybe more so. You can train yourself to drink a glass of water every hour. You can’t train yourself to suddenly go for a walk on the beach even though it’s raining. That’s your self speaking.

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Three very similar things: dreams, coincidences, and the bits and pieces you choose to pick up off the beach. Your own are always incredibly interesting; other people’s are unutterably tedious. Because each dream, coincidence and chosen pebble represents something telling and involved and personal about an individual’s psyche and values and needs and life — and that doesn’t transport well.

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As always, if you can think of anyone who might enjoy this Substack, please spread the word.