Russell Davies

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Tom Jellicoe's sawdust

Anne's Grandad's diary is a continual mundane joy. Fasten it to your feedreader.

"Wednesday 23rd January, 1963 - A bitterly cold night again. 22˚ of frost. Pipes in the back kitchen froze. Thawed out let from women’s toilet. Cleaned No.2 jet. Went to Tom Jellicoe’s sawdust."

Scrappylab

Noted as a good thing: Tom is writing blogposts again. Point your RSS reader his way. No pressure Tom!

Blog all dog-eared pages: Index Cards by Moyra Davey

"I registered this visual impression of my analyst in the preliminary consultations that eventually led to the analysis proper, to lying down on the couch, at which point I ceased to look at him. Upon entering his office, I both removed my glasses and averted my gaze, and his face soon faded into an ageless abstraction, a gentle, pleasing blur."

 

"There is a flânerie of reading that can be linked to the flânerie of a certain kind of photographing. Both involve drift, but also purpose, when they become enterprises of absorption and collecting."

 

"As I write this essay, the reading I do for it is a mitigated pleasure. Sometimes it feels like a literal ingestion, a bulimic gobbling up of words as though they were fast food. At other times I read and take notes in a desultory, halting, profoundly unsatisfying way. And my eyes hurt."

"Roland Barthes spoke of his love of, his addiction almost, to note-taking. He had a system of notebooks and note cards, and Latinate names to designate different stages of note-taking: notula was the single word or two quickly recorded in a slim notebook; nota, the later and fuller transcription of this thought onto an index card. When away from his desk he used spring-activated ballpoint pens that required no fumbling with a cap, and wore jackets with pockets that would accommodate these tools."

 

"Barthes: “When a certain amount of time’s gone by without any note-taking, without my having taken out my notebook, I notice a certain feeling of frustration and aridity. And so each time I get back to note-taking (notatio) it’s like a drug, a refuge, a security. I’d say that the activity of notatio is like a mothering. I return to notatio as to a mother who protects me. Note-taking gives me a form of security” (La Preparation du Roman, 1979)."

 

Hannah Arendt on Benjamin: “Nothing was more characteristic of him in the thirties than the little notebooks with black covers which he always carried with him and in which he tirelessly entered in the form of quotations what daily living and reading netted him in the way of ‘pearls’ and ‘coral.”

Voices in your head

This is from Naomi Klein's Doppelganger:

"In The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt described the process of thinking as a form of doubling, because it is a “dialogue between me and myself.”

When each of us thinks and deliberates, we are in dialogue with the “two-in-one” that is our self, a self that, unlike a brand, is not a fixed, singular identity, or else what would there be to think about—or with? Dr. Richard Schwartz, who developed the therapy mode of Internal Family Systems, suggests there are actually more than two parts in our selves: every self is made up of a multiplicity, or mosaic, of often contradictory voices, hopes, and urges.

In extreme cases, when those parts become disassociated from one another, this becomes a pathology—what used to be called multiple personality disorder. Most of the time, however, the capacity to have an internal dialogue (or roundtable discussion) with the various parts of ourselves is healthy and human.

Moreover, for Arendt, it is when everyday people lose their capacity for internal dialogue and deliberation, and find themselves only able to regurgitate slogans and contradictory platitudes, that great evil occurs.

So, too, when people lose the ability to imagine the perspectives of others, or as she put it in her essay “Truth and Politics,” “making present to my mind the standpoints of those who are absent.”34 In that state of literal thoughtlessness (i.e., an absence of thoughts of one’s own), totalitarianism takes hold.

Put differently, we should not fear having voices in our heads—we should fear their absence."

Much, much more prosaically, one of the things that makes a good communicator is being hounded by the voices of other people in your head.

When I write things to be understood (ie: not this, but an email, or a presentation, or something) I can't help but imagine the voice of the person receiving the thing I've written. My eternal question is 'if I say this, what will they say?' And it surprises the heck out of me that other people don't do this.

Grinning idiot

Nicki and the ustwo crew were kind enough to interview me about the Do Interesting book at the end of last year. They're so good at this kind of thing. Always impeccably handled and prepped. And it was fun. A nice crowd.

I forced all my fellow authors to come along with a determined intention that I would big them up during the talk. And then I didn't do that at all. Sorry folks.

Nooky

This is a great idea. This is the kind of thing I'll do when I'm retired. More retired.

Man in grey jumper checking email

Over the past year or so I've started performing at Electronic Music Open Mic events. I've done three at Dubrek in Derby and one in London. It's enormous fun. A very welcoming atmosphere and nice to get out of the bedroom and onto a stage. You get 15 minutes to plug in and play whatever you fancy. NO ACOUSTIC GUITARS.

I never really know what I sound and look like though, so I thought I'd replicate a performance to see/hear for myself. And here it is. The fish is for Kim.

(Gear note: I'm quite pleased to have created a set-up that's entirely battery powered. If you need some electronic noodling for your barbecue over the summer let me know. I'll be there.)

Remix

My friend Phalanx has done a remix of Long Live The Weeds. A vast improvement. Spotify. 

Diagonal

This is apparently where I went in 2023. I like that I just travel along a particular diagonal line. I like to stay oriented.