Evening drawing Jan 07, 2021

This evening I became tempted by a YouTube video of an artist painting a portrait, which led me to be tempted by another such video, and then more of them, and then by one of these artists’ websites, and then by my own pencils and paper. (I did not become tempted by YouTube videos advertising breaking news of some sort of crazy Trump riot, since I decided not to ‘check the internet’ until bed time).

Some observations on drawing:

Centrally planned war Jan 06, 2021

We watched Dunkirk, and wondered how many military deaths are for reasons more of logistics than of facing the enemy. Probably lots - we have heard that war is made of colossal logistical feats, so probably they often fail, and often lives depend on them.

Intended enjoyment Jan 05, 2021

I am sometimes unsure what is meant to be enjoyed in things, for instance the short story The Gioconda Smile, or In the mood for love which people often enjoy a lot. Which seems like it shouldn’t be a problem, as long as I find something to enjoy in them. But it also seems like I would be seriously missing something if I was buying bags of coffee all these years just to appreciate the thick, substantive quality of the paper bag between my teeth as I chewed it. How many of my enjoyments are like this?

Review: The Gioconda Smile Jan 04, 2021

(Spoiler alert: discusses entire plot of The Gioconda Smile by Aldous Huxley)

I’ve been reading short stories lately, which are often confusing to me, and I frequently wish that the author resolved the actual tension and relieved my actual curiosity more, by including some sort of short note at the end on what they were even trying to do.

With that said, I read Aldous Huxley’s The Gioconda Smile, and was somewhat confused by it. I mean, it was a story. But since I got it from ‘50 Great Short Stories…a comprehensive selection from the world’s finest short fiction’, I’m expecting it to be somehow surpassingly great.

On writing like a butterfly Jan 02, 2021

I thought it would be interesting to try to write my review of the Diving Bell and the Butterfly in my head without setting pen to paper until the end, and to convey at least some of it by blinking, since I find the fact that the author wrote the whole book in this way astonishing. Perhaps experiencing that process myself would improve my understanding of things, such that I wouldn’t be astonished.

I think trying to do this was an even better exercise than I expected, though by the end I was frustrated to the point of tears, and I’m still feeling kind of annoyed, having just put it up.

Review: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly Jan 01, 2021

I suspect my mind of taking its observations of a person’s physical energy and dexterity as strong evidence about their mental quickness and clarity.

The existence and the wrongness of this presumption were brought into relief for me by reading Jean-Dominique Bauby’s The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, on his life with locked-in syndrome. Because realizing that the author’s lively and intelligent voice was issued from a single blinking eye looking out of a mostly inert body felt like seeing a magic trick.

Mistakes to want Jan 01, 2021

The end of the year is a classic time for reflecting on the year. And a classic part of reflecting is noticing mistakes you have made. I admit that I don’t relish this: having made mistakes, admitting to them, and looking at them further all pain me, and I find it hard to call things mistakes. It’s because to make a mistake would seem to be to make the world worse than it could have been, and thus to indelibly reduce the total goodness of the universe at the end of time, which feels like a big deal and the worst (only?) evil.

Seeing the edge of the world Dec 31, 2020

A nice thing about looking at the ocean that I noticed today is that it is unusually easy to interpret the view as a close up of the edge of a giant wet ball of rock in space, and thus to more compellingly visualize the fact that I live on one of those, and some of all that that entails.

The Pacific Ocean where I am got dark, so here’s the Norwegian Sea 2.5 years ago to illustrate:

Desires as film posters Dec 29, 2020

Sometimes I like to think of desires as like film posters. You come across them, and they urge you to do something, and present it in a certain way, and induce some inclination to do it. But film posters are totally different from films. If you like a film poster, you don’t have to try to see the film. There is no metaphysical connection between the beauty of a film poster and the correctness of you seeing the film. It’s some evidence, but you have other evidence, and you get to choose. A film poster can be genuinely the most beautiful film poster you’ve ever seen, without the film being a worthwhile use of two hours. That’s largely an orthogonal question. If you put up the poster on your wall and look at it lovingly every day, and never see the film, that doesn’t need to be disappointing—it might be the best choice, and you might be satisfied in choosing it.

Measuring up to incredible potential Dec 28, 2020

Yesterday I wrote that people often talk as if events are basically determined by people’s values and capabilities, ignoring the difficulty of figuring out which opportunities to take, or even noticing opportunities.

I think one reason to have a better model is that this one doesn’t account for a substantial category of felt difficulty in being a human, possibly encouraging a general sense that one is ubiquitously failing, what with not seeming to be demonstrably grabbing the best of a vast multitude of possible options at each moment.