Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 46

Re-Thinking (Again) About Writing by Hand

In a 13 May post, I wrote about how I’d begun to find the act of writing by hand useless in the draft stage and shifted my working method towards the accumulation of raw footage / material / etc in the computer and using of pen and / or pencil only to develop it into something resembling quality afterwards.

This remained true until 14 May, when my first fountain pen, a Pilot Metropolitan, arrived and I quickly discovered the joy in using it to draft – both raw material and endless revision – by hand and resolved to never – at least until I have to re-think about the process again out of a lack of anything meaningful to contribute to this daily challenge – look back.

The biggest change, now that I’ve worked with it all week, is one of the utmost import: in writing by hand, slowly and methodically, I can break with the patterns to which I automatically revert when I type, a nigh-illegible freedom from the tyranny of the rote and staid unearthed in a newfound rhythmic work pattern of Scrawl / Type / Revise (by type and by scrawl) / Repeat on my way towards something resembling progress.

(Given that I’ve got a fountain pen tattooed on my arm, it only makes sense that I’ve fallen in love with the real thing, the symbolic / iconic becoming the reality.)

P.S. The 50th edition of my bi-weekly (for now – it may go weekly – newsletter drops on Sunday. You can sign up here, if so inclined.

P.P.S. Quite a day in music: new releases by Brad Mehldau (FINDING GABRIEL), The National (I AM EASY TO FIND), and Kelly Moran (ORIGIN EP).

Reshuffling / Badass Elephant

I appear to be in a period of reshuffling, of shaking things up in what had become, in hindsight, a staid routine: Fountain pen instead of the countless others I’ve tried (I’ve got the former tattooed on my arm, I should probably learn to use one – and, so far, I’m glad I did, but more on that in future postings); 15 minutes of meditation twice a day instead of 30; one slice of bread cut in two instead of two slices of bread for my sandwich (diabetic logic: why add the extra carbs when I can stuff the same amount of delectable meatstuffs into a smaller package and still be satisfied?); floss-rinse-brush instead of brush-floss-rinse (a recommendation from the dentist which set the OCD proclivities afire for a couple weeks and may have triggered all of these miniscule yet profound, for me, transformations); laptop instead of 27-inch monitor (smaller screen = more focus); podcasts instead of hot-take thinkpieces (mem: sometime write a list of the ones I listen to), print and paid subscriptions over online sources; sticking with these ramblings as my primary in-public outlet… the list goes on.

Consider this piece to be not representative of a search for why but more of a statement for purposes of self-accountability… oh, yes: I’ve become hooked on TEMBO THE BADASS ELEPHANT, a beautiful bit of cel-shaded sidescroller fun in which you, as the eponymous badass elephant, save the masses of Shell City from the invading hordes of Phantom. TEMBO is currently on sale in the Microsoft Store and is more than worth your time and pocket change.

Tick-Tock Blocks

I’ve written before of time and how I wish I could forget about it – a wish doomed, I fear, thanks to my own OCD-laden proclivities and the clockwork demands of my constant companion, Type One Diabetes, to remain just that, a wish. This doesn’t, however, mean that I can’t take steps to bring it somewhat closer to reality, if only in infinitesimal quantities.

To wit: instead of setting quit times (or start times for breakfast, et cetera), I now work to a timer. 90 minute blocks, three of them throughout the day: two in the morning, before my run, and one after lunch.

So far, it’s proving to be a tremendous – if still somewhat time-dependent – method of freeing my brain from the tick-tock of expectant clocking-in and clocking-out. While I still try to hew to a regular schedule, I’m less prone to anger if life does its thing: I can simply set a timer once life’s demands have been dealt with and get to work, whenever I need to – and, hopefully, divorce myself from the damaging, self-perpetuated myth that I’m useful to The Work only in the mornings.

Worth noting here that I gave the Pomodoro technique (something with a tomato and 25 minute clicky-timer chunks followed by short breaks and then a long break or whatever) and found it to be absolutely maddening.

there is no Other

Giddens, joined here by multi-instrumentalist Francesco Turrisi, continues and expands her exploration of the tradition of song begun in her previous releases, TOMORROW IS MY TURN and FREEDOM HIGHWAY, to a worldwide scope. A revelatory and fearless defiance of genre and categorization, THERE IS NO OTHER is easily on my list of favorite albums of the year; a gift to the ears.

Pair with: Giddens and Turrisi speaking with David Remnick on The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast.

(Re)Thinking About Writing by Hand

Whereas I used to convince myself that I could only write drafts by hand and transfer them to the computer for keyboard-revision in a form of first-rewrite, I’m finding that to no longer be the case (nevermind that I cannot read my own handwriting with more than a few hours between draft and typing): It’s more the other way ’round, now, as I type faster than I think (evidenced here, perhaps), and use this development – for want of a better word – as a means of generating the raw – and legible – footage to edit, to tear apart, by hand, a mechanical pencil my scalpel and the printed-out page my operating theatre, before returning that eviscerated block of now-unrecognizable text to the computer for final sewing up and polishing.

(All of the above is, of course, subject to change and to whim…)

Worth noting here that I’m an edit-as-I-go type of writer, incapable of moving on to the next paragraph without the current being ship-shape: as Zadie Smith says,

“Micro Managers build a house floor by floor, discretely and in its entirety. Each floor needs to be sturdy and fully decorated with all the furniture in place before the next is built on top of it. There’s wallpaper in the hall even if the stairs lead nowhere at all. Because Micro Managers have no grand plan, their novels exist only in their present moment, in a sensibility, in the novel’s tonal frequency line by line.”

Zadie Smith

Journals are different; they must be written by hand – in glorious, smeary pencil – but I don’t write in journals to remember – I write in them to forget (must remember that).

(linkexhaust) 12May2019

A fantastic appreciation of the work of Thomas Harris (via The Washington Post)…

“…these are deeply empathetic books in which horrific acts stand side by side with subtle, sympathetic portraits of the damaged souls who commit them. In Harris’s hands, the roots of incomprehensible violence become shockingly, often heartbreakingly clear.”

Bill sheehan, The Washington post

… a sobering assessment of diabetes mortality rates in rural areas (via The Daily Yonder)…

“From 1999 to 2016, diabetes mortality rates improved by 5.1 points in the central counties of metros larger than 1 million residents. In “non-core” counties – the most “rural” category in the study – the mortality rate improved by only 0.85 points during the same period.”

Tim marema, The Daily Yonder

… and, sadly, the Double R is forever closed. RIP Peggy Lipton (via Deadline).

Close Encounters of the Security Light

(+/-1900) the light opens its eyes across the parking lot on the other side of the driveway and, as the sun recedes, the light’s influence only grows and spreads across my corner of the world to the point that when (+/- 2200) we take the dogs out for their last piss of the day we can still tell that the leaves on the trees in the backyard are green. Towels over the bedroom window to sleep, waking up with the alarm at 0500, why’s this room so dark? before remembering my nemesis, the security light, and stepping into it, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS theme sounding across the little ‘burg as we, the dogs and I, K’s rescues, inaugurate the day; the leaves on the trees are still green.

Being Social, In Flux

While I tend to view writing about my online life as an exercise in futility and/or lack of imagination, this particular drumbeat’s been getting louder and louder of late – too loud, so an exorcism is required.

It’s time for a change.

Now that I’ve been writing these daily pieces for almost two months (seriously, there’s nearly sixty of them now, in addition to the earlier volumes of this side project), I’m comfortable with being comfortable here… and only here, publicly at least. My bi-weekly newsletter will continue to be my primary mode of social communication; its 50th installment – goodgod – drops this Sunday.

Needless to say, there will be some changes though those are still in flux and I don’t want to make any decisions about them now because part of the fun of this change is the thrill of the experiment. All I know is that there might be – in addition to these daily warm-up pieces – more posting throughout the day (maybe / whenever I feel like it), the sharing of Inputs – things I’ve read, things I’m reading – music recommendations, etc etc, who knows. All I’m looking to do here is to continue to make this site, this little unweeded garden of thought, once again the truest expression of myself and return to a minimal online existence via an essential period of brain defragmentation, of battening down the hatches of I to survive the 2020 election season, and engaging in new creative challenges – to write more, to write better, and to share more thoughtfully – beholden to no one except my own whim.

Onward.

A User’s Guide to Improvisational Lawnmower Repair, Part Two

Scene: a mad dash to mow the lawn before the rain and you have to wait another three days to mow the thing at which point it will probably have become a jungle and then you’ll have to hear all about that.

Step one: From your station atop the riding lawnmower, still in motion, somewhat, stare, with a bemused incredulousness, at the right front tire now fallen from the rim, all sad and squishy. Record in memory by saying, “Fuck, the fucking tire came off the rim.”

Step two: Dismount and confirm that, indeed, the tire has come off the rim. Repeat aforementioned memory recording.

Step three: One more confirmation. Yes, it’s all sad and squishy. Record.

Step four: Seek out a way to raise the mower off the ground. Find a chunk of chopped tree. Lift said mower onto tree chunk. Spin wheel with sad and squishy tire. Deflated. Record.

Step five: Remember method for getting tire back on rim from the time the tire came off the rim on the Little Wonder leaf blower. Recognize that the mower is, indeed, larger than the leaf blower but that the method should work. Recognize too that you do not have an air compressor – though your grandfather does but you refuse to call him to bring it up since you’re still hearing to “watch out for stumps” every time you go outside to mow (see part one) – but you do have a bicycle pump.

Step six: Spend the next hour and a half pumping said tire with said bicycle pump while being reminded of your intense loathing of businesspeople (many instances in which they “did a business,” as Vincent Adultman would say) as you listen to one and only one episode of the ZigZag podcast and marvel at said tire’s transition from sad and squishy to back on the rim. And inflated.

Step seven: Say a small atheistic / indifferent prayer that the inflated and attached tire will not deflate as soon as you remove the stump of wood.

Step eight: Rejoice, for the inflated and attached has remained so. Carry on with mowing. Watch out for stumps.

Notes from the Battlefield of Perceived Obligation

The phone near my desk, a shiny rectangle containing the totality of perceived obligations, obligations to my mother’s texts, or to my wife’s, or to the self-perpetuating need to regale a gaggle of digital strangers for hearts and likes with tales of the picayune and / or the dire: a conundrum that exists solely to be unsolvable, a self-perpetuating loop of distraction and abdication of purpose.

Solution: less.

Do less, read less (see Donald Hall quote of 26 April); recognize that these perceived obligations arose out of vulnerabilities birthed in the end of one iteration of life and are festering as the splinters left in your fingernails suppurate. Let go, pick them out. Prioritize what matters, what gives you purpose – not where you imagine yourself to be needed but where you are truly needed.

(There will always be dog pictures.)