Geoff > Status Update

Maybe I should start reading Nietzsche out loudly over his asinine 'important' conversation. Fuckin' people, I swear!

Do it! We're here for you.

Oh it's long over now. I'm fine. First world problem. But really discourteous!

Once I carried Vollmann's Royal Family into a restaurant and a doucher interrupted me as I was reading (waiting for someone) to ask me if I was reading the Bible (only large book doucher was apparently familiar with). I thought for a moment and said "yes".

ATJG wrote: "Once I carried Vollmann's Royal Family into a restaurant and a doucher interrupted me as I was reading (waiting for someone) to ask me if I was reading the Bible (only large book doucher was appare..."

It is a bible of sorts! A bible of whoredom!

The thing that really bothers me is that people assume because you're reading you're not doing anything. That reading isn't an activity that needs to be treated as being busy like with any other activity.

In most modern American minds, reading is more or less analogous to watching tv or scrolling through a facebook feed. A leisure activity subordinate in every way to the pursuit of money and/or socializing.

ATJG wrote: "In most modern American minds, reading is more or less analogous to watching tv or scrolling through a facebook feed. A leisure activity subordinate in every way to the pursuit of money and/or soc..."

I have a friend, a really good person in all other regards, who said to me when I asked what she'd been up to, "I was reading this book, but that's not really doing anything, that's kinda just killing time..." I've never thought of her the same again.

I feel for you. That's why I carry earplugs wherever I go. I buy them in bulk. And I try to sit away from blaring cafe speakers and under a strong light.

That's another thing: EVERYWHERE you go there's music. Always. Every store, restaurant, cafe, there can be no quiet! I like the earplug idea but I'm thinking obvious might be better, like the huge ear-smothering kind people wear shooting. Imagine Geoff reading there when guy comes up on the phone and Geoff just dons an enormous pair of earsavers.

I usually treat experiences such as these as exercises in concentration, but today was beyond the pale. But yes! So much unnecessary music everywhere, when the world sounds so interesting all on its own! I probably won't start bringing ear plugs/muffs/phones with me (I do have a pair of ear protectors made for hunting that I use sometimes when I play my drums - but those are not worn casually!)

The other day I was reading on a bench and this old couple walked by and said "Now that's not something you see every day anymore! Someone reading an actual book,"

It made me sad.

Aww , that's actually pretty sweet though. And sad, yes... But at least they appreciated you!

Maybe I'm falsely nostalgic, but wasn't there a time when reading in whatever capacity meant you were occupied: not vulnerable to every whim and hiccup of the terminably bored and needy? Did that time exist, when it was impolite to keep hectoring someone immersed in an open book?

I think that time may have existed, yes. As Proust says, the true paradises are the ones we have lost.

Rather Miltonean and doubly Lost. I simply worry.

See Jimmy's comment - cause for worry validated. (Lovely sentence there though, Miltonean and doubly lost...)

There was thread here not long ago, I think concerning music. It could no longer shock. Nor could literature. No one notices, nor cares. Maybe we should follow Brecht and elect a new kinship.

Hmm I don't know, I've always been happy to defend a lost cause...

You and Slavoj.

ATJG wrote: "That's another thing: EVERYWHERE you go there's music. Always. Every store, restaurant, cafe, there can be no quiet! I like the earplug idea but I'm thinking obvious might be better, like the hu..."

I recall a snug little Jenever bar in Brussels(?) that had no television, no music ; just places to sit, sip, read, chat. Still looking for that lost eden.....