Whatever You're Meant To Do
Today’s post is destined to be an old timey ramble, where I share just a bunch of stuff I have been inspired by or enjoyed of late. Enjoy what you enjoy, is a line from Woolf, that I endorse. Take your inspiration where you are able!
The first thing that I’ve found to be inspiring is the following quotation.
“Whatever you’re meant to do, do it now. The conditions are always impossible. ”
Perhaps it was this quotation by Lessing, and the persistence of Rilke’s line throughout my adult life “you must change your life,” and the following by Enrique Martinez Celaya that finally spurred me to change my work circumstances last week:
“Launch yourself recklessly towards your dreams. Wake up and be desperate. Desperation demands action. As an artist you must always be desperate. Try anything. Be careful with your calculations. Calculations become a habit. A calculated life is seldom radiant.”
I’ve left my position for something more precarious and lower paying, but for something that allows me to be more reckless and desperate perhaps. Different calculations. Impossible ones. But memento mori and all that. Time to get radiant.
So here are some things I’ve been reading and watching and listening to that inspire me. Let me know which ones are of interest to you.
“Bitterness, like anger, is a morally neutral emotion. It’s how we wield that feeling that gives bitterness power and moral weight. Is it a cudgel or a force for uniting? Philosopher Kathryn Norlock surmises that bitterness can be an active force for good when it is used to unite people in understanding the past to create a better future.”
Sideways, the podcast talks about grudges in “Grudge Match.” I admit I listened to this mainly because I enjoy the word “grudge.” It sounds a bit like grunge, and then leads you to other sounds like, a nudge, a lunge, fudge. I’d rather not hold a grudge, but you can see how they come about.
I am a regular longtime listener of On Being, the podcast, with Krista Tippett and I know you likely are too. I held off on the Nick Cave talk though because I literally did not think I could handle it. My emotions have been so many these days. But I did find a day where it felt good to listen and I was not disappointed. I’m thankful because it led me to my most-played song of late, The Anthrocene, and for its lines “I hear you’ve been out there looking for something to love.” In a New Yorker article, he also said this which I found very useful: “Certitude and indifference. They’re the problems with this world.” And on the subject of AI, he says this which I love and agree with: “That’s what is so awesome about art: that we deeply flawed creatures can sometimes do extraordinary things. A.I. just doesn’t have any of that stuff going on. Ultimately, it has no limitations, so therefore can’t inhabit the true transcendent artistic experience. It has nothing to transcend! It feels like such a mockery of what it is to be human. A.I. may very well save the world, but it can’t save our souls. That’s what true art is for. That’s the difference. So, I don’t know, in my humble opinion ChatGPT should just fuck off and leave songwriting alone.”
Also listening to Alvvays “Belinda Says” for the lyrics:
And I find myself paralyzed
Knowing all too well, terrified
But I'll find my way
I'll egress to Inverness with nothing in my pocket
Belinda says that heaven is a place on earth
Well so is hell
And we'll all get help, paradise
And we'll start another life
And then of course you gotta go from there back to Belinda Carlisle who was constantly on play in my youth.
An article on why you should refuse to get into arguments from The School of Life.
Lastly, we watched the documentary on Umberto Eco on Kanopy, titled, “Umberto Eco: A Library of the World.” I loved it. It’s been ages since I’ve reread anything by Eco, but I was a bit obsessed with his thinking back in the day, particularly about ‘fakes’ when I was writing my book, Hive: A Forgery. His library was amazing, and worth watching for that footage alone.
I’m sort of laughing looking back at this list of things I’ve been dipping into — apart from the Eco doc about his beautiful library, the sharings are about things like arguments, grudges, impossible conditions, grief, bitterness, starting another life….etc.
Maybe this says more about the offerings of the world right now than about me? :) Who knows. I do know that I’m feeling quite happy and excited about the future right now and that my eye that has been twitching scarily for the last month has suddenly stopped. So cheers to you and here’s to radiant and reckless dreams! and to doing whatever you’re meant to do!
I’ll end with my usual note about my Beauty Patreon — subscriptions starting at 3 dollars a month. Thanks for considering.
I’ll be in Toronto this coming week to celebrate with fellow Palimpsest authors Barbara Tran and Robert Colman and to launch our books. If you’re in Toronto and free on the 29th, please join us at Another Story Bookshop!
